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FOUR on a TOUR 

IN 

ENGLAND 




BRITISH ISLES 



Scale of Miles 



6 25 50 

Through Railroads 
Other Railroads 



L.L.POATESC0..N 



(Submarine Cables . 

Important towns are shown 
In heavy face type 



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"Sir- **■- 

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GUERNSEY^*, „ B 
ISLAND V__, 
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Longitude D "West 4 



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Long. G £aet 



FOUR ON A TOUR 
IN ENGLAND 



ROBERT and ELIZABETH 
SHACKLETON 

AUTHORS OF " THE CHARM OF THE ANTIQUE," " UNVISITED 
PLACES OF OLD EUROPE," ETC. 




ILLUSTRATED BY 

A MAP IN COLORS AND PHOTOGRAPHS 

TAKEN ON THE TOUR 



HEARST'S INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY CO. 

NEW YORK 



Ss 



Copyright, 1914, by 
Hearst's International Library Co., Inc. 



All rights reserved, including the translation into foreign 
languages, including the Scandinavian 



DEC 16 1914/- 



THE QUINN £ BODEN CO. PRESS 
RAHWAY, N. J. 



l CI.A88884« 

kit 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I What We Did 1 

II The Start 6 

III Into Wales 15 

IV Wending a Welsh Way 30 

V On to Harlech 41 

VI Through Shrewsbury 50 

VII The Way to Worcester 62 

VIII By Tewkesbury 75 

IX The Valley of the Wye 83 

X The Watery Cities of Bath and Wells . 97 

XI The Coast of Somerset and Devon . . 108 

— XII Clovelly and Tintagel 119 

XIII Eastward Ho! 127 

XIV Into the South Downs . . . . .137 
XV The Ride to Winchester .... 145 

XVI On the Route of the Conqueror . . .155 

XVII A New Canterbury Pilgrimage . . .168 

XVIII The Valley of the Thames . . . .181 

XIX Remote from Towns 191 

XX The Heart of England 199 

XXI To Famous Places 210 

XXII To FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS . . .221 

XXIII Through the North Country . . . 234 

v 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIV Northumberland and the Roman Wall . 247 

XXV Melrose to Tantallon 256 

XXVI The Lowlands of Scotland .... 265 

XXVII The Highlands of Scotland .... 276 

XXVIII Among the Scottish Lakes .... 289 

XXIX By Afton Water and Gretna Green . . 298 

XXX The English Lakes 310 

XXXI On the Yorkshire Moors .... S20 

XXXII Sherwood Forest and Haddon Hall . . 332 

Index 343 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Map, in colors, showing the route of the Four . . . Frontispiece ' 

FACING 

A delightful halt beside a Border castle page 

At an ideal inn of Elizabethan days 8 i<~ 

In a leafy English lane 

One of the thousands of lovely English homes seen from the 

roadside 9 

Half-timbered cottages in Darkness Lane 

The sundial of Cranford churchyard 16 * 

A fine doorway in old Cranford yS 

Entrance to a private park at Cranford 17 

The ancient Rows of Chester 

A sheep blockade in a walled lane 24 ; 

Hawarden, the home of Gladstone 

Unexpected music on a Welsh mountain road 25 ^ 

The main street of Conway 

The striking towers of Conway Castle 32 c 

A river mouth in northern Wales 

Cricket in the cathedral town of Bangor 33 

Within the bare shell of Carnarvon 

A mountain road under Snowdon 40 

A lonely Welsh cottage 

Harlech Castle 41 - 

The old oak settle in the inn at Cemmaes 

The cupped box gardens of Powis 48 

Deer photographed from the motor, in a castle park 

A winding street in ancient Shrewsbury 49 

The tipping castle at Bridgnorth 

A little drizzle in Bridgnorth marketplace 72' 

Old black-and-white houses, with passion flowers, at Ormsley 
Worcester Cathedral from the river 73 

An ancient town-cross 

The Norman tower of Tewkesbury 80 

vii 



viii ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 

One of the many clipped gardens that we passed page 

Quaint roadside cottages in the Severn valley 81 

The window of Geoffrey of Monmouth 

Red-coated soldiers going to church at Monmouth . . . . 84 S 

Tintern Abbey - 

The roadside inn at Alveston 85 ^ 

The deserted arcades of Bath 

A Bath chair in one of the curving circuses 100 u ' 

The charabancs at Bristol 

The squarish facade of Wells 101 l 

The Tor and its tower, near Glastonbury 

On the moors of Devon 108 '- 

The beautiful coast of Devon 

A typical old inn coachyard 109 '- 



The cresset light at Lynmouth 

The stairway-street of Clovelly 120 



V' 



Yankees at King Arthur's Castle 

The rocky approach to Tintagel 121 

Cheddar cows by the waterside 

Mudwalled cottages of Sampford Courtney 128 v 

The old guildhall of Exeter 

Children of gypsy-like caravaners 129 

The overarched avenue approaching Dorchester 

Our bluecoat boy at Blandford 136 

The bishop's garden at Salisbury 

Invading the solitude of Stonehenge 137 

Salisbury spire, the loftiest in England 

Brother Gardner, of St. Cross 144 

The Itchen, a river of Izaak Walton 

Where Franklin wrote most of his Autobiography; at Twyford . 145 ' 

Brighton by the sea 

Bathing machines on the shingle, at Brighton 

Kipling's close-gated home at Rottingdean 

Poetic Pevensey; the spot where William the Conqueror landed . 156 

We called this our one-thousand-mile house 

At the Gate of Battle Abbey 

One of the charming homes of Winchelsea / 

At the tollgate near Rye 157 



ILLUSTRATIONS ix 

FACING 

A Norman porch at Canterbury page 

Two of the chateau-like hoptowers of Kent 172 ^ 

The ancient Norman castle at Rochester 

Chislehurst, where Napoleon III died 173^ 

The old Dutch garden at Hampton Court y 

The level plain of Runnimede 180 '- 

Houseboats on the Thames 

Seeing the King and Queen at Windsor 181 - 

The scene of Gray's Elegy 

In the heart of the Burnham Beeches 196 *-' 

William Penn's grave at Jordans 

Milton's cottage at Chalfont St. Giles 197 

Magdalen and its green quadrangle 

The High Street of Oxford 200 ^ 

In the park of Blenheim 

In a quiet Broadway 201 

Stratford from the riverside 

Where Shakespeare went to school 

Our motor-car picture of Ann Hathaway's cottage * 

Guy's Cliffe: a great mansion near Warwick 208' 

A Warwick peacock strutting beside peacocks of box 

The part of Kenilworth associated with Queen Elizabeth . . . 209 

The cricket-field at Rugby 

A remarkable wrought-iron inn sign 

The old building into which much of Fotheringay was built 

The site of Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was 

beheaded 228 

The triple bridge at Crowland 

The dry old men of Crowland 

The old church of Boston 

The cathedral of Lincoln 229 - 

The moated grange at Scrooby 

The cathedral at York 

The watergardens of Fountains Abbey s 

The battlefield of Marston Moor 248 ' 

The ruins of Fountains Abbey 

Coxhoe Hall, the birthplace of Mrs. Browning 

The entrance of Durham Castle s- 

The cathedral of Durham 249 v 

Beside the ancient Roman Wall / 

The town-gate of dismal Alnwick 256 v 



x ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 



The sweeping stretch of Flodden Field page 

The stone guardsmen on Alnwick Castle walls 

The Till by Twizel Bridge 

Kirk Yetholm, the mountain village of the old-time gypsies . . 257 v 

The ancient peel tower at Melrose 

A garden by a lonely tower 264 * 

The tower of Smailholm 

Grim old Tantallon 265 * 

The sunny ruins of Craigmillar 

Far up the hill toward Stirling Castle 272 

Where Charles the First was born 

The St. Andrews golf links 273 l 

Rose-bowered Scotch cottages 

The Birnam Wood of Macbeth . 280 ¥ 

In the pass of Killiecrankie 

A family of trampers 281 

At the Roman camp near Fortingal 

A Highland cottage with one thatched chimney 288 . 

By the ruins of Rob Roy's cottage 

On the road beside Loch Lomond 289 '/ 

The banks and braes of bonnie Doon 

"Flow gently, sweet Afton" 308 

Maxwellton House, the home of Annie Laurie 

The old toll-house, Gretna Green, at the Scotch-English border line 309 

A mountain road near Derwent Water 

Looking across Thirlmere at Helvellyn 324 

At delightful Rydal Water 

The home of John Ruskin on Coniston Water 325 

The Desormais gateway of Skipton Castle 

The ancient stepping stones at Bolton Abbey 328 

The home of the Bronte's, beside the Haworth churchyard 

The moorland vale of Alcomdene 329 

Under the oaks of Sherwood Forest 

A part of the Duke of Portland's palace, where a garden masks 

subterranean rooms 336 

The home of the famous Bess of Hardwick 

A place which remains a wistful memory: Haddon Hall . . 337 



FOUR on a TOUR 

IN 

ENGLAND 



FOUR ON A TOUR 
IN ENGLAND 



CHAPTER I 

WHAT WE DID 

WE had anticipated much, but it was so infi- 
nitely beyond anticipation! For it was a 
royal summer. It was six weeks of superb 
liberty, six weeks of kaleidoscopic paradise. Each 
day was a dream that every day proved true. And it 
was all so feasible, so practicable, so easily done. 

It was six weeks of motoring, and of so motoring 
as to get at the very heart and essence of England 
and Scotland and Wales. 

It would have been easy to go at random, but it 
was not difficult so to arrange as to secure maximum 
of interest with minimum of distance and expense. 
We planned for a total of almost three thousand 
miles, with an average of seventy-five miles a day, 
and in those three thousand miles we obtained as 
much as could have come from any random five thou- 
sand miles or even ten, for in the three were included 
every variety of scenery, every variety of castled and 
churchly charm, the towers, the cottages, the stately 
homes, the places of historical and literary note. And 
all was done so reasonably, with entire absence of pro- 
hibitive expense. We tasted the full flavor of all 
three lands. There was no waste of time, nor was 
there omission of anything essential. 

Nor was there undue haste. At some places, such 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



as Oxford and Melrose, there was leisurely lingering, 
and always there were stops where there was some 
special view to enjoy, some special castle or tower or 
battlefield to see; and alternating with these pauses, 
packed full as they were of the glory of history or 
of nature, were long and steady flights beside quiet 
rivers and through long valleys, and past great farms 
and hills and meadows, and across great moors. 

And there were times when, instead of pausing, we 
went on past some mighty castle, some rock-perched 
tower, some shimmering stretch of beauty, gaining 
in those swift moments a superb vision that would 
remain a glorious memory forever. 

And for the practical detail of arrangement we hit 
upon a new and ideal way. 

We had found that to rent a car would cost twenty 
dollars a day; and that to ship our own, even though 
it was but a small-size touring-car, would cost two 
hundred and fifty dollars for ocean freight alone, 
even without any shipment by rail; or that, if the 
sum were to be shaded at all, it could only be by an 
impossible personal supervision of handling and 
crating. 

And then came the solution; and it was the idea 
of both buying and selling a car in England. 

An English house was written and prices learned, 
and next and naturally came the simple American 
expedient of advertising. A little notice that a car, 
new except for a three thousand miles' run, would 
be ready to turn over to someone in Liverpool about 
July 15, secured a number of replies, and an arrange- 
ment was readily made. And instead of assuming 
all the trouble and risk and expense of shipping, and 
then having the wear and tear upon our own car and 
its tires, our car was left at home, and a new car 
was bought and was delivered to us upon our arrival 
in England in May, ready for the tour. 



WHAT WE DID 



We in turn were to resign it to the new purchaser, 
in July, " in such condition as would naturally be 
expected after a trip of three thousand miles," as 
the agreement expressed it, with a provision to cover 
any accident that meant wreckage; and we were to 
be paid within one hundred and seventy-five dollars 
of the initial purchase price. 

Thus the car was both bought and sold before we 
saw it; before we even left our home! 

We were a party of four, for companionship, help- 
fulness and division of expense ; and we found at the 
end of the tour that the total traveling expenses, 
beginning with the one hundred and seventy-five 
dollars and adding for gasoline and oil, were just 
about equal to what the expenses of the same dis- 
tance would have been for four people by rail, by 
the cheapest of third class, and very much less than 
the distance would have cost by railway traveling at 
anything better than the uncomfortable and almost 
impossible third class, even without adding the neces- 
sary frequent items of cabs and porterage. 

And how infinitely more was seen ! For by motor 
car we went to many and many a point that no rail- 
way reaches, and every day the motor made us a 
hundredfold richer than the train could have done, 
in positive happiness, in the joy of life, in the pleas- 
ure and profit of it all. For there were no long rides, 
cooped up in little compartments, to reach objective 
points — for every moment we were at an objective 
point! There was no hurrying away unsatisfied to 
catch a train, nor was there ever an enforced waiting 
when curiosity was exhausted. We stopped where 
we wished and went on when we chose. We were 
literally masters of time. 

The license for the car, and the individual licenses 
to run a car, so that the two men of the party could 
relieve each other at the wheel, were arranged for 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



in advance, by mail, readily and without delay. For 
England welcomes Americans, and whatever path is 
chosen makes that path easy. All possible difficulties 
vanished into nothingness when approached. 

A membership was taken out, for a nominal sum, 
in one of the great British automobile clubs, and it 
more than repaid in actual service and vastly more 
in the sense of potential security that it gave. And 
we and the car were insured, and at a reasonable cost, 
and that too was a bulwark behind us. 

From Manchester into North Wales, then back 
into western England, always aiming for the scenes 
of greatest note or beauty — thus the delightful jour- 
ney delightfully began. Through Devon, and enough 
to the far westward to taste of the charm of Cornwall 
we motored on, and thence swept, by splendid zigzags, 
from point to point across southern England to dis- 
tant Canterbury, whence we turned toward London. 
From London we went by way of Hampton Court 
and Windsor to Oxford and Stratford, thence swung 
over to old Peterborough and there turned north- 
ward again to Boston and York and Durham and on 
through the castled bleakness of Northumberland. 
Into Scotland next, and to regally placed Edin- 
burgh, and up through the very heart of the High- 
lands, with lochs and mountains and narrow passes 
and stern and splendid beauty. Through Glasgow 
and down into England again to taste of the fine 
beauty and memorable charm of the Lake Country — 
thence to the mighty moors of "Yorkshire — and then, 
and finally, a dip down to the Dukeries and to Had- 
don Hall, marvelous in its age and its beauty and 
its perennial charm, and thence to Liverpool and the 
end. 

The success of the entire tour, a success complete 
in every detail, was due in the first place to a careful 
planning; and yet a planning neither rigid nor in- 



WHAT WE DID 



flexible; and, in the second place, to the constant 
recognition of the very simple fact that we were 
motoring to see Great Britain and not to compare 
Great Britain with America. Now and then some- 
what of comparison was inevitable, but it did not mat- 
ter to us in the least that the Thames is not so wide 
as the Mississippi or that the Eildons are not so lofty 
as Pike's Peak ; it was enough that the Thames flows 
out of illimitable history and that the splendid Eildons 
brood over a region of immortal romance. 

We had been much in England before and this as- 
sisted us greatly in planning our route to the best 
advantage, but day by day in the course of our jour- 
neyings we realized how slight is even a very con- 
siderable knowledge of a country compared with the 
both broad and intimate knowledge that comes to 
those who go by motor car. But we never let the fact 
that we had already seen a place keep us away from 
it on the motor tour, if it were a place that deserved 
to be included. 

And when the six weeks were over we looked back, 
in vivid memory, over long, long rides under the 
summer sun, and hours of mist and rain, through 
which towers and hills loomed in vague and indis- 
tinct allurement, and morning starts while still the 
dew lay thick on the lush grass, and of going on and 
on into long and lingering twilights, of stopping by 
the wayside to talk with some cottager or in ancient 
towns to see the glories of some venerable cathedral, 
or turning down some mysterious lane to follow the 
lure of exploration or of sheer adventure. 



CHAPTER II 

THE START 

WE like to think that we began at Cranford, 
for Cranford was so near the actual begin- 
ning of the tour and is so full of interest 
as the town in which is located one of the 
finest of all English stories. One can never forget 
the sweet charm of Miss Matty, one can never for- 
get her sister and all the other Cranford ladies, and 
therefore it is that such interest attaches to the town 
itself in being Cranford — although it may be well to 
say that it is not set down as Cranford in the gaz- 
etteers, but as Knutsf ord ; which is obviously unwise, 
for the association of the Miss Jenkyns's, Mrs. Jamie- 
son and Miss Pole with the place is of far more 
importance than the visionary connection with the 
past which makes it Canute's Ford, that is to say, 
Knutsford, because that king once crossed the river 
here! Typical, this, of the devotion of the English 
to royalty and even to distant royalty. A king, many 
centuries ago, crossed a river and therefore the place 
where he crossed must forever be Knutsford! But 
Mrs. Gaskell knew better than that and gave it the 
name of Cranford, and as Cranford it will forever be 
remembered by all who love sweetness and charm and 
clear and kindly visualization of character and life. 

And so we like to think that we began at Knuts- 
ford. But strict literalness reminds us that we actu- 
ally began at a less interesting place, Manchester; 
and, if ill-natured about it, we might suggest that, 
after all, the place of beginning is the place to get 

6 



THE START 



quickly away from and leave farther and farther be- 
hind; and yet we do not feel that waj 7 " about Man- 
chester, for although it is not attractive from a tourist 
standpoint, it is interesting in that it is one of the few 
great British cities. Yet here, again, one meets with 
surprises, for, although London itself is so immensely 
large, Manchester has not much over seven hundred 
thousand population, and Liverpool is not much 
larger, and Glasgow, which comes next to London, 
is also under the eight hundred thousand! 

But Manchester has really a very considerable de- 
gree of interest to an American, for her growth has 
been like that of an American city. Her seven hun- 
dred thousand people were less than ten thousand two 
centuries ago and barely a single hundred thousand 
just a century ago. Manufacturing, and in particu- 
lar cotton manufacturing, in Manchester itself and 
the tributary neighborhood round about, has done this 
thing; and an English city that can grow with the 
swiftness of one of America assuredly possesses 
claims to observation. 

Great, black, sooty place that it is, with an aston- 
ishing congestedness of population, its streets are 
thronged with people and vehicles, and there are even 
enormous clumsy tandem traction-engines, with enor- 
mous trailers, weaving their ruthless and sluggish 
way through the narrowest and busiest streets. And 
there are great tandem teams threading through the 
traffic, and there are motor cars moving with a swift- 
ness that seems quite disregardful of pedestrians, and 
even of passengers alighting from stopped tram-cars, 
there being no kindly rule as to not passing cars 
while passengers are getting off. In fact, one comes 
to learn, in England, that the rights of the individual 
mean those of the individual who motors or drives, 
when there is any conflict between his rights and 
those of the people who walk. But we were given a 



8 FOUR ON A TOUR 

friendly warning that an exception might be made 
when the driver happened to be an American and that 
it therefore behooved any American motoring to go 
with especial care. 

The best thing about Manchester is its air of self- 
respect and prosperity; and, as one learns later that 
this aspect is not customary in the large cities of 
England, it is well to remember that Manchester is 
the center of Lancashire, and that Lancashire, of all 
the counties of England, distributes its land among 
the greatest proportionate number of owners ; an im- 
portant thing, this, as one comes in time to realize. 

Manchester folk are proud of the appellation 
" Manchester man," which was long ago used by Liv- 
erpool rather contemptuously in contrast with " Liv- 
erpool gentleman "; and they are proud of their big 
town-hall, expensive and ornate as it is, in that style, 
beloved of the modern English, which may be termed 
Victorian- Gothic. And this town-hall represents all 
the good old English ideas, including that of the 
lavish hospitality of the lord mayor's banquets, served 
with wealth of civic silver: solid silver platters, huge 
and plethoric, and endless entree dishes, and silver 
epergnes in numberless quantity for decorating the 
great tables in the great town-hall banqueting hall, 
to which the liveried waiters proudly bear the steam- 
ing viands from the great town-hall kitchens. You 
see, municipal government is taken seriously in 
Manchester ! 

A great deal of business is done there, and done 
profitably, and yet the telephone service (govern- 
ment owned!) is so poor that we found, and this is 
literal and not a jest, that time was saved by hanging 
up the receiver and getting a cab or tram. And we 
were even told that the banks, for all their huge busi- 
ness, do not use adding machines : " If any of us used 
such a thing," said a business man, in all seriousness, 




\ ! 



I « 







A DELIGHTFUL HALT BESIDE A BoBDEB CASTLE 




At an ideal inn of Elizabethan days 





c^$ad*M<M,,i 



THE START 9 

' we should have the columns footed up afterwards 
with a pencil to see if they were right." 

Even in modern Manchester there is something of 
the old; and first there is the cathedral; an excellent 
structure, though far from being of the first order of 
cathedral beauty ; and yet, as we entered, we realized 
a fine and unusual charm in the coloring of the inte- 
rior, for wood and stone and the very shadows were 
all in a softness of nutty brown ; it was all in the col- 
ors of an etching. And we were shown the build- 
ing by one of the clergy, who imparted his appre- 
ciative knowledge of it in such a way as to make 
the place very distinctly worth while; for every 
traveler comes to realize that a place of lesser interest 
may be so seen as to make it surpass the place of 
greater interest in keenness of pleasure and vividness 
of impression. 

In the very shadow of the cathedral, in the very 
heart of the city's murk and soot and beside a black 
little river, is one of the most quaintly interesting old 
buildings, or rather set of buildings, in all England. 
For you are down in the busiest part of the city, with 
only the hemmed-in and murk-darkened cathedral to 
remind you that there could be anything there not 
connected with the thunder and congestion of trade, 
and you open a door in a high wall that seems to 
inclose some factory; and you have felicitously 
opened into past centuries. For here is an ancient 
school, retaining its setting of charm, seclusion, de- 
lightfulness, beauty. 

Two and a half centuries ago the school was 
founded, and it was established in buildings which 
even at that time were two hundred and fifty years 
old; an ancient ecclesiastical foundation; and there 
are rambling old passages and enchanting casement 
windows, diamond-paned and leaded, and a beauti- 
ful ancient library, in polished and age-black oak, 



10 FOUR ON A TOUR 

with fascinating nooks and corners and delightful 
outlooks into interior courts; and the rooms and 
courts and passages are sparely pervaded by blue- 
coat boys, inheritors of the shadows and seclusion 
and learning of that ancient school; and how many 
generations there have been of frank-faced boys clad 
in the quaint, long-coated suits of blue broadcloth and 
with silver buckles on their shoes! The place is one 
of peculiar interest, for the charm of the unexpected 
adds itself to the charm intrinsic. 

We looked over Manchester while the very neces- 
sary speedometer was being attached and the motor 
run with the car at a standstill for two hours with the 
intent of relieving the stiffness sure to be in any new 
motor, and while the luggage carrier, which had been 
ordered by letter and was ready for putting on at the 
back, was adjusted, to hold our American motor rain- 
proof trunk, inclosing two broad suitcases — much 
larger and lighter than ordinary suitcases — which 
could be withdrawn nightly without disturbing the 
black, patent-leather, rainproof trunk-shell. 

Besides these we had two leather bags, which were 
carried with us in the car in the seat or at our feet; 
there being just room for them; and two umbrellas, 
which we never once opened ! — but that was only good 
fortune. For London needs we sent somewhat of 
luggage in advance to meet us, and from time to time 
sent laundry in advance to be ready and waiting for 
us at some point where we knew we should stop. We 
even sent our steamer clothes in leather bags, to be 
held at the railway station at the port of departure, 
and got a receipt for them! — a feat not easy to ac- 
complish in England. 

One result of having a baggage carrier at the back 
— or perhaps we should adhere to the words " lug- 
gage carrier," and be English while in England — was 
that it put us from the chance of carrying even a 



THE START 11 

single extra tire where an extra tire would naturally 
be fastened on, for it was not a car that would lend 
itself with readiness to having a tire at the side. We 
hesitated a little; but needs must when lack of space 
drives; and so it was decided to start off on our jaunt 
without a spare tire, for it seemed likely that, should 
we need one, we should never, after all, be at a very 
great distance from some source of supply. We 
risked somewhat of delay and inconvenience rather 
than overcrowd ourselves. With the tools under the 
seat, we carried two extra inner tubes, but even this 
precaution, so it turned out, was unnecessary, for 
when the entire journey was at an end we had never 
found any necessity for either of these tubes, nor had 
we needed an extra tire. Luck was a factor, and care, 
but principally it was the perfection of the English 
roads. A gallon can of lubricating oil found a wood- 
wedged abiding-place under the hood beside the mo- 
tor, where it could besmirch no clothes. 

And so, late in a late May afternoon, we spun out of 
Manchester along an octopus-tentacle sort of high- 
road that dangled off for miles, and we finally got 
clear of the city and were in the country roads and 
headed for Cranford; the air was a caress; and we 
ran by stone walls, and hawthorn hedges with blos- 
soms pink or white, and great fine trees and little 
villages. It was eight miles to Altrincham; it was 
five miles more to Mere Corner, where, so the map 
showed, we were to leave the main road and turn 
to the left — and it was pleasant to feel that we were 
to have such a quaint-named turning-point on our 
very first run. 

Our first night was to be at Cranford, and this brief 
late-afternoon run was but preliminary. For we were 
really to begin at Cranford, and there was piquancy 
in the prospect! 

And there was piquancy in the realization. For 



12 FOUR ON A TOUR 

Cranford is still a delightful old place, set agreeably 
on a riverside with bits of the water glimpsed down 
the narrow cross-streets, and it has much of the pleas- 
ant old-fashioned simplicity which made it, in a book, 
a town to love. There are still the little houses, and 
the little bowed windows, and the lupines and the 
wall-flowers in the gardens ; there are still the gently- 
winding narrow streets and lanes, there are peacef ill- 
ness and a general quietness of atmosphere and the 
people are still busy with petty things; there is still 
the sound of clogs upon the stone-paved "ways ; there 
are still the tiny little shops, comfit shops and green- 
grocer shops, and flower and seed shops, and little 
pork shops where the bacon hangs in halves from 
head to hind hoof; there are still the little two- 
wheeled delivery carts; there are still the old court- 
yards and passages, and you still may see tidy, little 
old ladies come stepping out over their tidy, little 
sunken doormats. And if you see a chimney-sweep 
going to work, proverbially black, with black and 
sooty clothes and tools — we saw one in the early 
morning, giving thus an impression of not having 
abandoned his blackness even on the preceding night ! 
— if you see a chimney-sweep going to work, it is 
another of the old-time survivals, and if he goes to 
work riding on a bicycle, as this one did, it is but one 
of the cases in which modern improvement makes for 
swifter progress; and it is gently amusing. Mrs. 
Gaskell would have put such a chimney-sweep into 
her book. 

And there is here and there a doorway or window 
or gabled corner of real charm and beauty; on the 
way to Darkness Lane one passes a little row of 
tiny, ancient white-and-black-fronted houses; and 
there are also old-fashioned inns, including the very 
one at which Lord Mauleverer aristocratically stayed, 
and it stands right upon the street, with the cobble- 



THE START 13 

stones coming to its very door ; an inn where there are 
excellent service and immaculate cleanliness, an inn 
with beamed ceilings, with little spraddly bouquets of 
old-fashioned flowers placed upon the little tables in 
the dining-room, an inn where there is still a " boots " 
in his green apron and where they will serve you chops 
an inch thick, with green peas; a posting inn, this, 
with a good old courtyard in behind, coining down 
from posting and coaching days; a courtyard doubt- 
less easy for horses, but offering certain difficulties 
in the manipulation of a motor car into shelter, it 
being necessary to make numerous turnings through 
attenuated passages and around short bends; an inn 
itself full of passageways and stairways in inex- 
tricable convolutions; an inn of peacefulness, where 
in the evening you are given a private sitting-room 
with a blazing coal fire, very attractive and comfort- 
able toward the end of May, and where you wake in 
the morning and look down over the flower boxes on 
the window-sill into the narrow street and see little 
girls going to the little comfit shops with their pen- 
nies. That is one thing about Cranford — you get a 
general impression that things are little! 

Cranford itself — that is to say, the people of Cran- 
ford — take their fame as the home of Miss Matty 
and her friends with a calm that is almost indiffer- 
ence ; in fact, they seldom think of those most precise 
and pleasant ladies and frankly are but little inter- 
ested. Were it otherwise, they would be spoiled by 
overconsciousness, they would lose their artless sim- 
plicity and the place would become a village devoted 
to Mrs. Gaskell instead of to her immortal creations. 
And so it is better as it is, for the town remains 
unspoiled Cranford. 

And the fine old church of mellowed brick, with 
trimmings of time-grayed stone, still stands, in its 
setting between the two long streets of the town, on 



14 FOUR ON A TOUR 

a level with one and perched attractively above the 
other; a church with ivy and clipped holly massed 
green against its sides, and with a low, square tower, 
and with a grassy graveyard beside it that is dotted 
everywhere with daffodils and whose paths are all 
a-blossom with iris and wall-flowers, and with an 
ancient urn-shaped sundial set in the middle of the 
graves as if futilely to mark the passing time for the 
forever quiet sleepers round about. 

We motored quietly about the long but little town ; 
somehow, everything is still done quietly and deco- 
rously in Cranford; and at one end of the town we 
found a great private park, typically lovely, entered 
through a beautiful classic gateway, and at the oppo- 
site end of the town, on a gentle slope, an ivy-clad 
building, hawthorn shaded and romantic, with ex- 
quisite latticed windows, and with soft, yellow 
laburnum-trees lushly in bloom all about it. A little 
chapel this, although it does not look like a chapel, 
and on the hillside, beside it, among other flat and 
sun-warmed stones, all covered with moss and shaded 
by flowers and shrubs, we saw the stone that marks 
the lonely resting-place of the woman who wrote the 
story of Cranford. 

And we were glad that we had chosen such a town 
as the place to call our starting-point, and from Cran- 
ford we went forth to the exploration of England, 
with every mile and every moment of our journey 
opening up new horizons. 



CHAPTER III 

INTO WALES 

WE started late, for we were not eager to leave 
Knutsford too soon, and we went on under 
the cool, clear sky of a cool, clear day. We 
lunched in a shady spot by the roadside, the first of a 
long, long line of lovely luncheons out of doors ; and 
again we went on our way. We passed motorcycles, 
many of them with side cars for a second passenger, 
and we passed a dean, as fat and solemn as a butler, 
cycling in a flat silk hat; and there were birds sing- 
ing in the great oaks and elms and in the green 
and mossy-boled beeches, and there were estates lined 
by walls or hedges and one had a wall fully eight 
feet high running for miles. 

We were on our way to Chester, and for the first 
few miles we followed a short-cut road out of Knuts- 
ford that was so bad from an English standpoint that 
our motor map did not even mark it! But we felt 
our way experimentally into it and found it of a 
smooth excellence. 

We came up with one of the automobile associa- 
tion patrol, bicycle mounted and uniformed in mus- 
tard and blue, with bedford-cord breeches and natty 
puttees and the " A A " brass emblem on his sleeve. 
We carried the " AA " emblem on the front of our 
car, and it is customary and advisable to do this, so 
that any one of the patrol, who are scattered all over 
Great Britain, can see that a member's car is ap- 
proaching and warn him of speed traps, fresh-tarred 
roads or any other danger or inconvenience. 

15 



16 FOUR ON A TOUR 

We were on our way to Chester, because that city 
lay on the route to northern Wales, and we went 
there, although it is one of the places to which all 
tourists tend. For from the first, while feeling to 
the full the privilege of finding the places that are 
little visited, the stretches of countryside that are un- 
known to tourists, the villages and streams and hills 
and towers that are never seen by those who go by 
ordinary rail, we would not avoid the interesting 
places which are widely known. We were to explore 
a comprehensive England, and Chester has so much 
of interest that we would not willingly have missed 
it even had it not been so directly on our road. 

The people of Chester so take it for granted that 
visitors will go there, and have always gone there, 
that it is matter of firm belief, or at least they make 
themselves believe that they believe it, that King 
Harold was not actually killed at the Battle of Hast- 
ings, but, realizing that he was hopelessly defeated, 
fled from the field and to Chester and stayed there 
in retirement till death. For where, they would ask, 
could he find a more restful and delightful place of 
sojourn? It rather militates against the story of 
Harold, however, that there has always been satisfac- 
tory evidence of his death in battle, and that nothing 
is more certain than that William the Conqueror 
would definitely see that he was dead. But such a 
story cannot have and does not demand verification; 
the very existence of such immemorial traditions 
shows that some very great mysterious stranger really 
did come incognito to Chester, and his actual identity 
long ago became naturally a matter for romance. 

Chester still possesses its ancient walls, with memo- 
ries stretching back as far as Roman days, for some 
of the sections are built upon Roman foundations ; but 
the place has long outgrown these walls and they run 
principally through the present city instead of around 




Half-timbered cottages in Darkness Lane 




The sundial of Cranford churchyard 







A FINE DOORWAY IN OLD CRANFORD 




Entrance to a private park at Cranford 



INTO WALES 17 

it. It is pleasant to go motoring through an ancient 
gateway, and to stop the car and climb the steps to 
the battlements, and get unexpected views into de- 
lightful gardens, where there is exquisite turf, and 
vines thick with innumerable flowers, yellow and 
white and pink, and where the vicar's daughter is 
playing tennis with a curate; and then, for contrast, 
to look down into the busily thronged streets. And 
the wall is of particular interest through being rich in 
homely memories pointing out that the great daj^s 
of the past were not alone of knights and nobles, for 
the bakers, the saddlers and other town guilds had 
their appointed places on the towers and on the walls, 
and always guarded them. 

The age of chivalry included, in Chester, all 
classes, and the forms of ancient chivalry came down 
to almost modern days, for one of the prisoners cap- 
tured at a battle fought within sight of these very 
walls, in the Cromwell war, was a captain of the 
Queen's Troop, and, just as if from the pages of a 
novel instead of in grim fact, he was wearing a scarf 
that the queen had personally given him that he 
might wear her colors. 

There is a cathedral of Chester: a structure that 
would seem extraordinary if there were not so many 
cathedrals even more beautiful. And one of the 
things which each traveler must settle for himself is, 
to what class of things he will devote his time and 
how much of his time. A motorist finds that appre- 
ciation is possible and delightful without minutiae of 
inspection and also where to economize in mental 
superlatives. There are more than thirty cathedrals 
in Great Britain; thirty-four seems to be the precise 
number, but even high English authorities differ, 
which is certainly diverting enough; and to devote a 
long time to each cathedral would make it impossible 
to devote time to anything else; to study the thirty- 



18 FOUR OX A TOUR 

four would alone be a long summer's occupation! 
And so we decided to economize somewhat with 
cathedrals. 

But we endeavored not to pass anything of par- 
ticular interest or import; and so here in Chester 
Cathedral we followed an official guide — one ought 
always to take a guide at a cathedral, for he can 
open the otherwise unopenable and point out many 
things that a visitor could not but miss, and a good 
guide is far above rubies — but our guide here at Ches- 
ter could scarcely be described as being more than 
a garnet. However, we tramped about and in and 
out with him, through aisles and cloisters, and looked 
at a curious gallery under the clerestory that fronted 
into the cathedral nave through a low series of quatre- 
foils, " where monks used to stand during the serv- 
ice," as we were told was the tradition of its use. 

But the most interesting things, to us, in shadowy 
Chester Cathedral, for we knew we were to see other 
cathedrals still more rich in beauty, were two tattered 
and time-faded battle-flags that went up Bunker 
Hill against the deadly American fire, and they 
thrilled us as mementos of that great day on which 
the honors were with the losers. And after the garnet 
had left us we saw another American memorial, a 
tablet, called to our attention by a Welsh visitor who 
saw we were Americans, and it commemorates, in sim- 
ple and dignified words, the domestic and religious 
virtues of Frederick Philipse, and his devotion to his 
country and his king in opposing, at the peril of his 
life, " the late rebellion in North America," in conse- 
quence of which his estates were confiscated and he 
himself was compelled to flee; and the picture came 
to us of the Philipse manor house at Yonkers, over- 
looking the Hudson, and of the beautiful daughter 
of this loyalist, whom Washington, years before the 
Revolution, would have married had she not chosen 



INTO WALES 19 

instead an officer who afterwards fought against 
Washington in the war. How one country interlocks 
with another! — and all this from a forgotten tablet 
on a pillar in this ancient English cathedral. 

We saw delightful old houses as we motored 
through Chester, half-timbered as the charming 
ancient style is termed, with projecting stories, and 
rich in carving and ornamentation, and such houses 
give a fine impression of the quaint and curious skill 
of old-time workers; and most interesting of all are 
the ancient Rows, houses with footways running on 
top of the first story and taking the place of what 
would be the front room of the second floor, making 
thus a second-story public passageway, pillared in 
front and with the third floor roofing it over, and 
with this passageway giving access to the most at- 
tractive and gay little shops in town, facing upon 
them. 

We did not motor up and down Chester, but merely 
in at one side and out at the other, for it is impossible 
to do pleasant sightseeing while guiding a car through 
streets as crowded as these ; and so while we did most 
of our looking around we left the car in a garage. 
The problem of what to do with the car while ex- 
ploring the interiors of cathedrals and prowling 
through quaint passageways and walking on city 
walls is ever before the motorist on tour, for all his 
bags and rugs and coats, to say nothing of lamps and 
other detachables, not to speak of the very car itself, 
cannot be casually left on city streets; and at this 
garage we had a queerer experience than came any- 
where else on the journey, for, returning for the car 
sooner than expected, it was found removed to a 
remote corner, with our bags and coats laid in a heap 
in the bottom of it, " so as not to attract attention," 
we were told. It made us a little uneasy at the mo- 
ment, but everything seemed to be there — raincoats, 



20 FOUR ON A TOUR 

tools, rugs and trunk on the back. And we were 
many miles on the route, with darkness coming on, 
before we found that the lock on the outer case of the 
trunk had been torn off by a chisel and that we must 
have returned at just the vital moment, for the bags 
inside had not been opened. This was an uncanny 
beginning — but the only incident of the kind on the 
entire trip. 

But motorists are eager to get away from any city ; 
it is not alone the call of the road, in the sense 
that it is the call for the exhilaration of movement, but 
it is a restless yearning that represents the restless 
longing of mankind for fields and sky and air and 
liberty. And so we stayed in Chester only long 
enough to see it briefly, and then with eager happi- 
ness and larger anticipation turned our faces west- 
ward. For us it was Westward Ho! over splendid 
highways to nearby Wales. 

And as we left the city we turned first down an 
attractive road to visit Eaton Hall, the seat of one 
of the wealthiest of English peers, the Duke of West- 
minster. It was a trifle annoying to find that motors 
were not allowed beyond the lodge gates, for, although 
it was cool when motoring, we found that the day had 
turned quite warm when we began to walk, and it 
was a walk of a mile and a half; but it was a fine 
walk through a superb park. In the notice at the 
entrance gate the building itself, the residence of the 
duke, is modestly referred to as the " house," but it 
is in reality a huge and homely pile of so-called 
Gothic. One sees that there has been effort to copy 
the towered and terraced effect of Westminster in 
London, as if remindful that it is from vast real- 
estate holdings in that city that this peer obtains the 
greatest part of his wealth. But his estate here is 
itself a thing of vastness; so many square miles, so 
many miles long — the duke even has coal mines of 






INTO WALES 21 

his own, with a private railway line inside of the es- 
tate boundaries for carrying the coal. We were to 
see other great estates in the course of our journey, 
but none more strongly illustrative of the striking 
features of land tenure. Yet the duke does not 
attempt to hold stubbornly to all the square miles of 
his tract; no, he is reasonable; he does not wish to 
sell, indeed, but there are some outlying corners of 
the estate that he is willing to part with — on leases, 
so a signboard has it, of nine hundred and ninety-nine 
years. 

And we are once more on the highroad and feel 
that we have been going great distances because, be- 
ginning in England, we have already reached Wales ; 
whereas we have not really crossed the line, for, 
though Chester was once a part of Wales and is often 
looked upon as Welsh, it is really in cat-famous 
Cheshire and thus in England; and as to distance — 
well, a glimpse at the record shows that we have been 
going but slowly. Not that we were in a hurry, but 
that we have gone a much shorter distance than we 
had expected, for the car, being new, had been run- 
ning stiffly and with now and then a little difficulty. 
But we were glad to have a new car rather than a 
thoroughly broken-in one, feeling safer as to engine 
and brakes and tires, and confident that with a little 
patience the smoothness of running would come. 

On toward Hawarden! And the wheels seem 
musically to hum, and the wind comes fresh and clear, 
and a line of distant mountains looms, vaguely dis- 
tant, in a long gray line in the softly-graying after- 
noon. And we pass over a railroad grade crossing! 
and then another! — and thus are legends shattered, 
for we thought there were none in this land, for on 
no point is the average Englishman more insistent 
than in claiming that there are no railway grade 
crossings in Great Britain ; — and, with the realization 



22 FOUR ON A TOUR 

that this boast is based on error, we find ourselves 
passing over the boundary into Wales. 

And so the car is nursed carefully up the long hill 
that is topped by Hawarden village. And here is the 
shop to which Gladstone, the Great Commoner, used 
solemnly to carry his own shoes for their cobbling — 
for odd things must the politician do if by politics 
he would thrive, whether in England or in America, 
and it was by such devices as this that Gladstone 
strove to take the people's minds from the fact that 
he was in reality living in a fine, great, exclusive, 
walled-in park, just as if he were not the Great Com- 
moner, but one of the titled Uncommoners; indeed, 
the park which he owned — or was it his wife? — has 
within it not only an ancient castle ruin, but the great 
imposing modern mansion in which he lived. Twice 
favored, he! 

And, as at some other great estates, the rule is 
- against the entry of motor cars; reasonably enough, 
perhaps, but you begin to think that motoring in 
England is going to include much walking; and, al- 
though in theory we ought to enjoy a walk in such 
a park, and although we ordinarily should do so, we 
are all amused to find ourselves, like other motorists, 
positively aggrieved at what all at once seems a hard- 
ship. But you come to find that there is not to be 
much walking, after all. 

The park itself, with its great trees, is mostly rather 
rough and unkempt, and except for its finished roads 
it would seem much like a bit of attractive country 
pasture and woodland, but there is a wonderful gar- 
den, geometrically planned and edged delightfully 
with box, near the house, and separated from the park 
by a ha-ha, the diverting but serious name for a 
sunken walled ditch. And from great part of the 
long walk through the park there is a fine, broad 
sweep of landscape. 



INTO WALES 23 

Thus far we had marveled at the small amount of 
plowed land seen along the roadsides, and this place 
is but another of those that show how much more 
charming a park may look than a plowed field and of 
how much less practical use it is to the countryside. 
And yet, it may be added, this particular park is so 
hidden from the public road behind a high, bleak stone 
wall that perhaps a stretch of arable land would look 
better, after all. 

A tiny cluttered village is Hawarden, and at its 
very edge was a gypsy camp, with village boys vainly 
trying to ride gypsy donkeys bareback — a diversion 
as old as Time! The villagers that one meets are 
of a fine and simple type and the influence of Glad- 
stone and his shoes was probably excellent, one 
thinks! The car is in some straits again after its 
climb and everyone is unobtrusively willing to be 
helpful. A man lends his bicycle so that one of us 
may go in search of an expert mechanic, and the 
mechanic comes back in his motor repair car, carry- 
ing bicycle and rider with him, and arrives in the 
center of the village in a flurry of local excitement. 
A necessary adjustment is made and we are off on 
the road, down a long hill, in the cool of approach- 
ing evening, and out upon broad levels, and then 
we unexpectedly run into a series of manufacturing 
towns just where we are expecting open country — 
towns dreary in themselves, but with the faces of the 
people bright and not too tired. Men and women 
and children are thronging about, for work has ceased 
and they are out for an hour or so in the long and 
lingering light. 

We drive cautiously, for one must from the first 
realize that the people of Britain love to walk in the 
middle of the road; is it a survival of the time when 
there was safety only in the middle? And we go 
slowly also, because the placards are frequent that hold 



24 FOUR ON A TOUR 

the motorist to the almost unattainable minimum of 
five miles an hour, and we do not know how par- 
ticular or how disagreeable a policeman or a magis- 
trate might be. There were plenty of policemen in 
sight, keeping a sharp eye on the factory throngs and 
giving an impression that trouble is repressed in its 
inception; and the officers look at us with an air of 
knowing that we are strangers and express by cour- 
teous waves of the arm that they are ready to be of 
help. 

We come up slowly behind a band; it is mill men 
earnestly blowing and thumping as they march 
proudly on, but attracting little attention, except 
from a following — no small exception! — of the en- 
tire small population of the neighborhood, with not 
a head of this following above the waistbands of the 
band! — giving a queer effect, as we look ahead and 
down a little slope, as of tall men and a thousand 
twinkling legs ! And all, bandsmen and children, tall 
men and legs, alike made courteous way for us and 
the players smiled with conscious pride as we thanked 
them and gave an impression as of praising their 
efforts. 

The line of dreary towns was left behind us — 
dreary, but with an impression of cheerful folk and 
a great deal of music, for there were two or three 
other bands, also passed, not to speak of a few hand 
organs! — and at one side of our road, as we went 
on in the now swift-gathering dusk, were great sweeps 
of yellowish brown, the sands of the estuary of the 
Dee. And how vividly and almost with a start came 
the memory of " Oh, Mary, call the cattle home, 
across the sands of Dee!" The tide was out, leav- 
ing the immense stretches bare, and right to the edge 
of the great sands, across the water from these dreary 
towns, came down green fields and garden walls and 
cottages. 







n 

■ 


■ 


U 
Q 
< 

W 
o 
o 

B 

w 
a 




< 





« 








■HMH 

Hawarden, the home of Gladstone 





Unexpected music on a Welsh mountain road 



INTO WALES 25 

The sun set in a great round ball, and twilight came 
in earnest, and there was another long and crowded 
street and then, with unexpectedness, a delightful 
change to romance and solitary beauty, with hills 
and ravines and broken country and widening views 
that were very soft and lovely in that half light, and 
we came to a wonderful road, twisting up and ever 
up, with rocky banks rising above and rocky banks 
dropping far below, a road of sweet wildness, and as 
we reached the top, approaching Holywell, there was 
really a roadside well, with a group of pretty Welsh 
girls gathered about, each with one or two buckets 
for the evening supply of water ; we came upon them 
unexpectedly, around a bend, and they were softly 
singing together an old-time part-song. It was all 
wonderfully effective there in the falling twilight, and 
the sound of their voices was very sweet and low. 
And we halted for a while, for the radiator had begun 
to boil and we needed water for it and a little time 
for the cooling of it, and our stop was lengthened 
perforce by a little more trouble in starting the car 
again — almost the last such trouble, this — and at our 
request, and with pretty shyness, the girls sang on, 
rendering old Welsh songs with a simple natural- 
ness. 

And close beside one of the older of the group 
stood a child, to whom its sister said, " Come, 
Jenny." 

"No!" 

" Come, Jenny ! " with a soft urgency. 

" No! " with a firm and not disagreeable determi- 
nation ; not obstinacy, the differentiation lying in the 
fact that the child was attractive looking and that 
its voice was pleasantly full of a sort of curiosity. 

' She's two years and nine months old," said the 
sister, as if in patient explanation; and, " Come, 
Jenny," again she softly urged. 



26 FOUR ON A TOUR 

" No." And then, from the lips of this child of less 
than three years, and in clear tones, came the sen- 
tence, amazing for such an age: " I will wait; I want 
to see the motor go ! " 

" And she'll wait! " said the sister resignedly. 

And she did. 

But it was not long. At the next cranking the 
engine rallied, and we were on the way again, and 
left behind us, on that wonderful road in the dim- 
ming light, the group of softly-singing girls. 

It was eight o'clock when we got to the town of 
Holywell ; we had loitered in Cranf ord and walked in 
long-avenued parks, and the motor had delayed us, 
but, although we had had some rather vague idea of 
getting to Conway that night, it did not bother us 
that we had gone only forty-nine miles, for every- 
thing had been so delightful. And from the begin- 
ning, although we knew that there was an expected 
total distance to cover within a definite time, we were 
not going to worry and hurry ourselves away from 
pleasant places. To see Great Britain thoroughly 
was our object, but it was even more our object to 
see it with perfect enjoyment. And, as it turned out, 
we saw it with both the thoroughness and the 
enjoyment. 

Our motor guide-books and road-books said noth- 
ing whatever of any hotel at Holywell, though 
Baedeker named two, but we soon espied these two, 
both good-looking, and chose one of them and drove 
up to the door quite ready for dinner and rooms. 

Our arrival put the place in a turmoil. It seemed 
as if the whole town was in a flutter, as if all the 
neighbors had to be gathered in for consultation or 
assistance. We could not in the least understand it, 
and in fact we do not understand it even yet, except 
that, in course of time, we gradually came to learn 
how unexpected visitors may be at many of the inns 



INTO WALES 27 

of Great Britain. The taproom is sure to be open 
and busy, but as to visitors for meals and overnight, 
even in many a large hotel, there is quite often no 
anticipation, quite often no supply of food! 

But at any rate everyone here was in a pleasant 
flutter; the nominal head of the house, the man (who 
is never the actual head of a British inn), as well as 
his wife and his daughter and the man-servant and 
the maid-servants and the town. 

After many whisperings we were shown our rooms ; 
there were six well-ordered rooms to choose from, 
and we found them pleasant and clean, with much of 
old-time furniture and a vast array of white crocheted 
mats upon the toilet stands, and we were given hot 
water after more fluttering and told that a late sup- 
per would soon be made ready for us. 

"And what should you like?" was the solicitous 
inquiry. 

Full of thoughts of our inn of the night previous, 
we suggested chops, and there was instant acquies- 
cence, but with the acquiescence we noticed an in- 
creased flutter, and then followed much scurrying 
down corridors and shutting of doors in the distance, 
but we did not understand what it portended until, 
three-quarters of an hour later, we were told that 
not a chop was to be found in all Holywell! 
' So won't you choose something else? ' : 

We were really hungry. It was now half-past nine. 
And we felt that it would be the part of policy to let 
the choice rest with them. 

'Then bacon and eggs?" They and many an- 
other keeper of inns can utter these words and put 
such a beam of delight into their eyes as they say 
the formula, so we came to learn, that ideas of chicken 
or cold roast beef or the porterhouse steaks of home 
have to fall before its necessity. We were hungry. 
This was not precisely what we should have chosen, 



28 FOUR ON A TOUR 

but we promptly agreed, whereupon there was more 
flutter, more running here and there, more opening 
and shutting of doors and bobbing about, and mean- 
while we alternated between our rooms and the series 
of pleasant sitting-rooms and little lairs and dens 
provided for the accommodation of the visiting public, 
of which rooms there is always a disproportionately 
large number at an English inn. It was well after 
ten o'clock when the bacon and eggs, with great piled 
plates of buttered but delicious bread, with hot tea, 
was served; we had suggested coffee, but had at once 
seen that coffee was quite beyond them. 

On the whole, we spent a pleasant night; assur- 
edly there could not have been more earnest desire 
to please. And when they asked, in all soberness, as 
we went to bed, what we should like for breakfast, we 
fully realized that it was a matter not of choice, but 
of what there might be. " Then bacon and eggs? ' : 
— this with an alert brightness as of discovery, as if 
bacon and eggs had never before been thought of for 
a visitor's delectation. We agreed ; there was nothing 
else to do ; but we bespoke a pot of coffee with earnest 
firmness. 

And all this was the more surprising, because Holy- 
well is an ancient town and has long been a place of 
considerable manufacturing, although we happened 
upon an approach by so attractive and lonely a road ; 
so old a town that people have been going there since 
before the time of William the Conqueror, he him- 
self having been one of the many who have stayed in 
the place — not in the inn where we were, however I 
For not only is Holywell a manufacturing center, 
but its holy well has for centuries drawn pilgrims 
thither — even James the Second pilgrimaged here to 
ask for the heir that afterwards came, although, so his 
enemies claimed (and surely as an odd reward of 
prayer), in a warming-pan! 






INTO WALES 29 

At first we naturally supposed that where the girls 
were gathered singing was the famous well, but the 
holy well is really a spring, of enormous flow, quite 
on the other side of the town, and is surmounted by 
an ancient and really fine bit of stonework. But it 
does not, in our memories, in spite of William the 
Conqueror and James the Second, match the well 
where we halted the car and listened to the Welsh 
girls' songs. 



CHAPTER IV 



WENDING A WELSH WAY 



FROM the very first day the motorist begins to 
realize, and with every day the more deeply 
realizes, the delightful difference between 
starting at what moment he chooses and by what 
route he chooses and over the splendid open roads, 
rather than to be tied to railway time-tables and to 
views from the car windows. At Holywell, all that 
we were to do was to start when we were ready, across 
country, with our next objective tiny St. Asaph and 
its tiny cathedral. 

We went out of ancient Holywell, up and up a very 
long hill, by a white road of limestone whiteness — 
odd, how many towns you leave by a long hill! — and 
the car climbed valiantly, and again the radiator 
r£ boiled; but it is not wise, if one has regard for his 
radiator, to fill it with hard limestone water, and so 
an effort was made to obtain rainwater, but it was a 
difficult effort and it taught us always to carry a 
couple of quart bottles of good water in the car. 

We have waited till fairly on our way to say that 
there was no difficulty about observing the different 
rule of the road in England, the passing other vehi- 
cles on the left instead of the right ; we had supposed 
that it would be a hard matter for at least some days 
and that it would require very great caution, and it 
did require caution and concentration, but as any 
motorist at all times must give caution and concentra- 
tion to his work if he would be safe, there was little 
extra difficulty involved. For one thing, the driver 

30 



WENDING A WELSH WAY 31 

is always helped by the fact that the motor that is 
coming toward him is turning properly, so that, with 
a little of extra caution, the entire matter is simple, 
and soon the turning to the left becomes almost auto- 
matic. It is rather odd, though, that it seems harder 
to remember to pass a vehicle properly that is going 
in the same direction than properly to pass one going 
in the opposite direction ; to pass it on the right, that 
is, instead of the American left; and perhaps the ex- 
planation is that here there is no suggestion from the 
action of the other motor. But even this is too light 
a matter to make any trouble, and what threatened 
to be a serious inconvenience and possible danger van- 
ished into almost nothing. 

It was under a warm sun that we started on our 
way after our first night in Wales, and before long 
we reached a point from which there was a great view 
of the distant sea — a distant shimmering, noble and 
unexpected — and then we were off among the hills 
again, on a lofty road that was mainly level, and great 
mountains rose on the left, in the near distance, and 
between the road and the mountains were broad, 
smooth fields, furze-covered in a glory of bright yel- 
low, and at our right were groves of fir and larch. 
For miles in front of us the road went stretching on, a 
line of marvelous white. 

At the summit of a long hill there came another 
halt for engine cooling; and where could a more 
charming spot be chosen! For a while the car was 
determined not to start, no matter what was done 
in adjusting and turning; it seemed almost human 
in its perverseness ; we were miles from any possible 
aid, and then, in that lonely region, along came two 
Italians, wheeling their street-piano from one town to 
another, and at a word they stopped for us and began 
to play their tunes, and there on that level road be- 
tween great trees and the fields of furze we danced 



32 FOUR ON A TOUR 

and we laughed, and we forgot as we danced and we 
? laughed that a motor car could be troublesome ! The 
Italians, in this strange land, were ecstatic at hearing 
a word or two of their own tongue and we said 
" Grazia " and " Buon giorno! " to them and they to 
us, all strangers far from home. After this gay, little 
rest on the highroad, we essayed to start the car again, 
and in an instant all its ill-temper had vanished and 
it started — and never again on the entire journey did 
it trouble us, but went steadily better and better and 
more and more smoothly day by day until the finish 
at Liverpool. It would probably not be best to rec- 
ommend dancing to enthusiastic Italian music on a 
lonely road as a remedy for a car that will not go, 
but it certainly worked well with us, and with light 
hearts we went on into the unknown. For it was all 
the unknown! There was never a moment when we 
did not feel that we were coming upon the unex- 
pected. We were always having some new experience 
or finding some unexpected view. 

The clouds and shadows chased each other across 
the wind-swept yellow fields, and lights and shadows 
flickered beneath the trees as the sunlight sifted 
through the swaying branches. And a great valley 
opened up, and down and down a long road we went, 
coasting for two miles — and in such glorious air there 
is a peculiar exhilaration in coasting, even more 
than in straight going under power — and then we 
were on a level stretch, and at length a tower, low and 
square and of stone, the tower of ancient St. Asaph's, 
smallest of all the cathedrals of Great Britain, came 
in the distance into view. 

In the midst of a little town, tiny and quiet, stands 
the tiny cathedral itself, in its quintessence of quiet. 
An American once remarked, after having been led 
to one after another of the mammoth cathedrals of 
Great Britain, and searching for the right descriptive 




The main street of Conway 




The striking towers of Conway Castle 




A RIVER MOUTH IN NORTHERN WALES 




Cricket in the cathedral town of Bangor 



WENDING A WELSH WAY 33 

word, that they were capacious! But this cathedral 
of St. Asaph's is far from capacious! In fact, the 
Lilliputian building is but 182 feet in length, as com- 
pared with the 584 feet of the new Liverpool cathe- 
dral or the 560 of ancient Winchester. 

St. Asaph's is noteworthy not only for this mat- 
ter of size, or rather lack of size, but in that it was 
used to keep cattle and pigs in, in the time of Crom- 
well, just as we were to learn later that Gloucester 
Cathedral was used for horses ; it was clearly the de- 
liberate intent of the highly religious men of the Com- 
monwealth to degrade cathedrals. And this cathe- 
dral seemed also noteworthy to us because among its 
monuments is one to the memory of Mrs. Hemans, an 
almost forgotten name, but one that ought to be re- 
membered, for a woman who could put into English 
literature three poems that are familiar to every per- 
son of even moderate education and knowledge has 
performed an achievement : the three being, " The 
Stately Homes of England," which splendidly ex- 
presses the English country landscape, " Casabl- 
anca," which is spirited and full of feeling, and " The 
Breaking Waves Dashed High," which every Amer- 
ican honors and loves, because she felt what she wrote 
and was herself thrilled by it and her lines splendidly 
express the brave spirit of the Pilgrims, even though 
the coast is not stern or rockbound ; and if it be added 
that, in spite of putting up a monument here in the 
cathedral to her memory, she is really buried in Dub- 
lin, it is only to suggest that there may be Welsh bulls 
as well as Irish. 

St. Asaph's — which is pronounced San Tassaph's, 
just as up in Scotland they pronounce St. Andrew's 
San Tandrews — is really an interesting specimen 
among the thirty-four varieties. Length of building, 
it may be remarked, has no bearing upon size of 
income, for the bishopric of 182 feet receives pre- 



34 FOUR ON A TOUR 

cisely the same as does the bishopric of 584 feet, 
twenty-one thousand dollars! And of the two forces 
upon which England chiefly relies for safety — her 
fleet and her church — she pays more to the bishops 
than to the admirals. 

But no consideration of the Established Church 
and its expensiveness to the people disturbed us as 
Americans or in any degree lessened our apprecia- 
tion of the supreme peacefulness of this little cathe- 
dral and its immediate surroundings. The little town 
was drowsing through its mid-day warmth; a few 
children went quietly home from school, a few cattle 
wandered thoughtfully down the street, the tinkle, 
tinkle of a distant blacksmith's hammer came very 
softly and was scarcely louder than the wind in the 
great beech-trees that shaded the cathedral and the 
daisied turf and the massed laburnum that drooped 
yellow over the old stone walls. 

But even a quiet little cathedral and a little town 
must not too long detain us, and we are on our way 
again, following devious turns, and, as we paused for 
a few moments to let a flock of sheep maneuver 
through the tight-walled road to safety, a man came 
hurrying toward us. " You are from my own coun- 
try!" he cried joyfully. 

He did not look like an American, as he stood by 
us in his knee-long walking trousers. However, we 
supposed he must be, since he said so. But in a mo- 
ment, " You are from Devon! " he exclaimed. 

In a sense we were from Devon, for our car, sup- 
plied to us in Manchester, had been bought through 
a Devon agent, who had secured the license and plates 
for us, and the plates showed a " T " before the car 
number, each county having its own arbitrary initial 
to designate the cars licensed by it. 

The man was disappointed to find we were not from 
Devon. " I have been looking at every motor car 



WENDING A WELSH WAY 35 

since I came to Wales," he said. He was far from 
home, he went on, up here, and then he smiled, it 
coming to him that the distance could not very well 
seem great to us. But the greater part of English 
folk travel but little; the sons of the well-to-do still 
like to take a European journey, the equivalent of 
the " grand tour " of the past, and the rest of the na- 
tion go about sparingly, except on short bank-holiday 
trips and, every summer, to the particular resort to 
which all their lives they have been accustomed to 
go. — And yet, after all, some Englishmen learn to 
travel, for Henry M. Stanley was born less than ten 
miles from that very spot! The English travel pro- 
saically or else go very far afield, indeed. 

The Devon man, finding us strangers, though not 
Devonians, at once exerted himself to be of assist- 
ance and he pointed out, across a sweep of fields, a 
ruin standing grimly beneath the shadow of a distant 
mountain. " That is Rhuddlan," he said, and in its 
distant vague and shadowy dignity it seemed to be 
telling vaguely of the stories that have linked it with 
the names of the sovereigns of eight centuries and 
with many a siege and battle. And again we realized 
the privileges of motoring, in coming upon the fas- 
cinating and the seldom-visited away from the line 
of railroad travel. 

We were aiming, by a diagonal cross-country road, 
for Abergele and the coast and we passed a very fine, 
modern gateway built quite successfully in the style 
of the old, the gate to the park of the castle of Dun- 
donald. And we motored by a high hill road to where 
we suddenly had a great view of the sea stretching 
off superbly in a lovely blue under the bright sun 
and the brightest of bright blue skies. It was Colwyn 
Bay, and it curved sweepingly to the right, to where, 
far off, it was edged with white lines of sand with 
mountain heights rising beyond, while at the left there 



36 FOUR ON A TOUR 

was a mighty headland, Great Orme's Head, rising 
high and jutting far, and from our lofty road there 
was a steep dropping down into the sea, and behind 
us was a hedge of hawthorn and ivy with hills rising 
steeply, and in the hedges the cuckoos were flitting 
about. 

We went on by that wonderful road with its great 
views from our height and — how often we were to 
notice such differences! — with the railroad far below 
us, where little could be seen. There were rocks and 
mountains, headland after headland, the ever blue 
sea far below, and the road, ever turning and bending 
but holding to this lofty height above the water, was 
often a narrow line between hedges or walls and often 
ran beside private parks of dewy, leafy greenness 
with their great trees. And we stopped at a particu- 
larly beautiful point to eat our luncheon; often and 
often we were to enjoy these impromptu luncheons, 
with strawberries or apricots or cherries — there were 
never any other possibilities of edible fruit to the 
American taste — and always with zest and enjoy- 
ment at precisely the spots where we could lingeringly 
enjoy some fine flavor of scenery or countryside. 
And we made a point of preparing for these delight- 
ful at fresco affairs by purchases at some time in the 
forenoon, at the likeliest-looking place possible, 
rather than to wait and delay for luncheon at some 
inn, where the hour of our arrival and the hour at 
which they saw fit to serve a luncheon were impos- 
sible to harmonize. Thus we had the middle of the 
day thoroughly in our own control rather than at the 
mercy of the innkeepers. This plan also left us free 
and ready to indulge in afternoon tea at the tea- 
shops or tea gardens as we came to them, in the course 
of the afternoon, for at such places the service is 
prompt. 

And we left the sea and the heights, and descended 



WENDING A WELSH WAY 37 

to an immaculately clean and new-looking watering- 
place named from the bay, Colwyn Bay, where no 
one seemed to be doing anything in particular, but 
where everyone seemed to be having a satisfactorily 
good time, and soon we were passing over beauti- 
fully widening Conway River, by a sort of causeway 
bridge, and went through a gate in the town wall, a 
gate so narrow that not only could two motors not 
pass, but it seemed as if even a very thin man and 
the motor could not pass, and we were inside an- 
other of the few walled towns of Great Britain and 
beside a castle of huge immensity. 

The old man who took our threepence each for en- 
trance was eager to watch the car while we were 
inside, and we remember looking down from the bat- 
tlements a little later and seeing him standing ear- 
nestly, leaning on his cane, the very picture of a 
faithful watchman ; and from the battlements we saw 
much more than a faithful watchman, for we saw the 
picturesque streets and the ancient homes and we 
saw the river and its broadened bay. 

The walls of the castle, from twelve to fifteen feet 
thick, the eight massive round towers, the great halls 
of the interior, the stupendousness of it all, are tre- 
mendously effective 

There was the old High Street to motor through, 
and the oldest house to be glanced at, and an ancient 
and well-preserved town house, with wonderful ceil- 
ings, to be seen before continuing on our road; and 
a splendidly delightful road it was, now running won- 
derfully through a narrow valley set low among 
great heights and now rounding out upon an open 
stretch of water, and climbing higher and higher to 
give us the view. Blue water set with islands; glori- 
ous and exhilarating whirling around headlands and 
gliding along at the very edge of the water and at 
the very base of cliffs that rise far above, and pass- 



38 FOUR ON A TOUR 

ing slate quarries high up on the great cliffs; the 
largest slate quarries in the world being hereabouts, 
and with the aspect now and then of whole mountains 
removed, not by faith but slate; and with mountains 
of debris. And thus to Bangor, fourteen miles from 
Conway, fourteen miles of splendid pleasure and with 
an added sense of the great horizons of motoring! — 
the ever-changing horizons that are such a keen and 
constant delight. 

A quiet place is Bangor, but it was there that we 
somehow came to an impression of Wales as a na- 
tion by itself, a people with earnest self-centered in- 
terests and affairs; and a very practical folk in 
worldly affairs, yet at the same time a people who 
still honor their poets and singers, and particularly 
the poets ; and at Bangor they were preparing a great 
structure for a coming Eisteddfod (to pronounce this 
word just as the Welsh do, and without apparent 
effort, makes a stranger free of the best the land can 
offer!), the Eisteddfod being the recurrent festival 
of poets and minstrels and musicians, and attracting 
thousands upon thousands of Welsh to these week- 
long gatherings. 

We glanced at the cathedral, notable in that it is 
perhaps the plainest and most unattractive of them 
all, and at white-clad men playing cricket in a green 
field near by, and went along by the sand-bordered 
Menai Straits and looked at the tubular bridge, once 
world-famous, leading over to the island of Anglesey, 
and wondered who went over to that big and prac- 
tically forgotten island; and we remembered, before 
leaving Bangor, that its name is commemorated by 
its faithful sons in the slate districts of both Maine 
and Pennsylvania. 

A few miles beyond Bangor we passed road re- 
pairers elaborately at work ; first we came to a stretch 
of wet tar, and next to a pebbled stretch, this giving 



WENDING A WELSH WAY 39 

the tires an artistic pebble-dash effect ; and, if we have 
not said anything thus far about the roads, it has not 
been because they are not worth writing about, but 
to see first how well they maintained their average. 

And they are wonderful roads! Smooth, without 
holes and free from little stones — motoring in Great 
Britain is like motoring on a never-ending series of 
smooth floors. And this is because, in the first place, 
the roads are splendidly built; and, in the second 
place, because they are kept in repair with never- 
ceasing vigilance. 

And we speak of the roads just now because it 
was a few miles out of Bangor that we noticed for 
the first time on the trip broken glass on the road; 
a broken bottle it was, and it was an experience so 
seldom repeated as to be notable. 

It was evening, but still it was light. In a fine run 
of ten miles, past many a great walled estate with 
its great park and its great trees around a great 
house, we came to Carnarvon, a busy, clean town, with 
the streets thronged with people and the air full of 
a chirring hum of talk ; which talk, as we were to dis- 
cover, was mostly Welsh! It was a modern-seeming 
street down which we went to our hotel, and twisting, 
as we should expect it to do in an ancient town. Old- 
fashioned folk did not like the street called Straight! 

At the hotel, a once-while coaching inn which com- 
bines an old-time air with modern conveniences, we 
had a delightful dinner. We even achieved the fa- 
mous pink salmon and green cucumber on a white 
plate! There was a quaint little bar with rows of 
shining brass and copper measures and a pretty, 
modest-looking barmaid, and little square smoking- 
room with red-leather settees, and cupboards of old 
china for upper-hall decoration and a garage with 
high-walled inclosures, topped with spikes and broken 
glass. 



40 FOUR ON A TOUR 

But all the time we felt that the town was curi- 
ously not coming up to expectations. Here it was, 
bright, prosperous, busy, mostly modern, and yet we 
had gone to Carnarvon solely because of there being 
at that place one of the greatest castled ruins of the 
world. And we have seen no castle! After dinner, 
it being light though very late, we strolled out, and 
went farther down the busy, modern street, our won- 
der increasing; then suddenly, as we turned a corner, 
across an open square and right in front of us, there 
stood an enormous castle! It was all so unexpected! 
There was no gradual leading up to it with ancient 
houses ; nothing to tell that the castle was right there 
till the very corner was turned. Carnarvon is a place 
for an impression. 




Within the bare shell of Carnarvon 




A MOUNTAIN ROAD UNDER SnOWDON 




A lonely Welsh cottage 




Harlech Castle 



CHAPTER V 

ON TO HARLECH 

WE did not try really to see Carnarvon Castle, 
except to get a sense of its exterior, until 
the next morning. And one does not wish 
for many statistics about such a structure; one does 
not care just how many centuries it stood, or how 
many sieges it sustained, or just how large it is; it 
is the tremendous size and strength of it, the tremen- 
dous impression of feudalism, that count. 

But there are some details that are really neces- 
sary to an adequate comprehension of such a place, 
and that the banquet hall has the noble length of one 
hundred feet and is forty- four feet wide, with a splen- 
did height of forty, is one of them ; and even the most 
unimaginative cannot but realize what scenes there 
must have been in that magnificent room, now a bare 
stone shell. By contrast, it may be said that the room 
in which the first English Prince of Wales was born 
is of the tiny dimensions of only twelve feet by eight ! 
A comfortable room it must have been, though, with 
its still existent fireplace and the hangings and floor 
coverings which long since disappeared. For it is 
a great mistake to think of the people of the Middle 
Ages as living in rooms of cold, bare stone. That im- 
pression naturally comes because we see the buildings 
of the feudal times dismantled and bare, but when 
these buildings were used they were lived in with 
great comfort, not only by rough soldiers, but by 
ladies who wore superb gowns and jewels and knew 
how to keep warm. Of course they did not have 

41 



42 FOUR ON A TOUR 

American steam heat, nor did they have the equiva- 
lent of it, but so far as that is concerned they do not 
have it in England even yet. Now, we do not mean 
that the feudal times gave comforts equal to those of 
to-day, but that they did really give a great deal of 
coziness and comfort, and that this particular little 
room would be very cozy, indeed. 

Edward the First, by the way, great fighter that 
he was, is seldom thought of as a humorist, yet he 
seems to have had something of the humorist in him, 
after all. After having the last Welsh Prince of 
Wales rather summarily disposed of, he tried to ap- 
pease the Welsh people by promising them a prince 
who should be born in their own country and who 
could not speak a word of English, and one can 
imagine with what delight this promise was received. 
Well, when his son was born at Carnarvon, he had 
him at once shown to the people and promptly and 
publicly proclaimed as Prince of Wales; and the son 
and heir certainly fulfilled both of the promised con- 
ditions! And at the death of Edward the First his 
own statue — and this must have been by his personal 
order — was placed over Carnarvon Castle entrance, 
and it represented him with his sword half drawn. 
At once the Welsh were in a fury: " King Edward 
is drawing his sword upon us even when dead! " they 
cried; whereupon, " No," was the quieting response, 
" he is simply sheathing it ! " And as the Welsh did 
not know which way was really meant, and they 
couldn't settle it, they let it quietly go at that, and 
let the statue stand. 

The little rooms and big; the elaborate ancient wa- 
ter supply, and the deep wells with pipes of lead or 
stone running here and there; the many towers, not 
round like those of Conway, but pentagonal, hex- 
agonal, octagonal; the intricate passages, the huge- 
ness and impressiveness of it all, the walls of the 



ON TO HARLECH 43 

thickness of fifteen feet, unite to arouse a tremendous 
picture of the tremendous past. 

And striking things may be done in such a castle 
even in these modern days; for it was as recently as 
1911 that the present Prince of Wales was given his 
formal investiture there — oddly enough, in view of 
the history of the castle, the first such investiture in 
history — and at that time seventeen thousand people 
were gathered inside of the walls. 

When we were there repairs were in progress, neces- 
sitating the putting in of new beams, and beams for 
the purpose had been brought from Canada, beams 
of oak, one of them weighing — at least so the fore- 
man said, but he may have been under the influence 
of the memory of Edward the Joker — eight and 
three-quarter tons; and it certainly was the biggest 
beam that either of us ever saw. 

The thousands of men who worked in building this 
great structure received two pennies apiece a day. 
That the labor was compulsory and that there was 
no striking for higher wages may well be believed; 
a strike on the part of the workmen would have made 
the soldiers strike them, as one of the party remarked ; 
but the architect was given the princely remuneration 
of twelve shillings a week. And the way in which he 
provided places for the ingenious downpouring of 
melted lead and clever apertures for crossbow shoot- 
ing, to welcome the coming and speed the parting 
guests, are alone sufficient to show that he well earned 
his salary. 

From Carnarvon we turned southward, and we 
went up a long, long hill — some three miles of climb- 
ing — and then, looking back, there was a magnificent 
sweep of view, and in front of us were towering twin 
and purple peaks that guarded a pass. 

And a winding road led us through this pass, with 
great bare mountains on either side and a swirling 



44 FOUR ON A TOUR 

stream beside us; and when we stopped for a few 
moments in the midst of that loneliness, there was 
not a sound but the cawing of a few rooks and the 
distant intermittent bleating of a few sheep. Snow- 
don, the highest of all the Welsh mountains, loomed 
in front of us, lofty and grand. Narrow and fre- 
quently twisting, the road led on, with steep grades 
up or down, with rocky gorges beside us, thick with 
bluebells and fern, and with rarely a solitary house 
to be seen; and near one such solitary little house we 
lunched, beside a rocky pool near the road, where the 
stream expanded in deep green breadth and where 
precipitous heights and hoary-looking woods were 
all about us. 

In front of the lonely little cottage was a tiny sign, 
" Tea and Hot Water " ; a characteristic sign, this, 
of picturesque places in Great Britain, and meant to 
show that hot water will be furnished to those whose 
taste demands that they carry their own tea rather 
than trust to cottage quality. The roof of the cot- 
tage was entirely covered with ivy so ancient that 
its stems were enormous in thickness, and it lay there 
in a mass fully two feet deep, and beside the cot- 
tage there grew bush fuchsias in plants rising eight 
feet high and bearing showers of magenta blossoms. 
The living greenery effaced the cottage and made it 
look like a wild habitation. The interior of this tiny 
cottage, with its thick stone walls, was just two tiny 
little rooms, and there was an old Welsh dresser of 
oak on the stone floor, and a disproportionately big, 
dark fireplace, with the tiniest of fires glowing in its 
depths to boil the water, and tiny little windows with 
tiny diamond panes of greenish glass. 

And there were literally flies in that scenic oint- 
ment; they were on a few cattle which came wander- 
ing up to the pool to drink, and they thick-covered 
them and tortured them worse than we had ever seen 



OX TO HARLECH 45 

fly-torture in America ; but the cattle, with their flies, 
wandered off after a little, and again we were in 
solitariness among the mountains, except for the 
widow effaced behind her fuchsias. And then we were 
surprised to notice an artist hard at work on a jut- 
ting rock, and quite astonished when, in a woodland 
path on the other side of the stream, there came into 
view a couple of lovers, short-skirted and knicker- 
bockered (if one may use a Washington Irving word 
about an Englishman on a holiday in Wales) ; and we 
were positively amazed when, around a curve in the 
road, there came into view two banting and panting 
women armed with walking-sticks and with pedome- 
ters audibly ticking. The call of the car, the eternal 
lure of the highway, had been upon us even before 
we were thus forced to realize that our supposedly 
solitary paradise was in reality near some mountain 
hotel; and again we started off, and in a little while 
we came to the hotel itself, all wistaria covered and 
shaded by trees, and with immense delight we found 
it to be " The Royal Goat " ; Use majeste, if there 
ever was! 

And we found not only the Royal Goat, but a vil- 
lage, a beautifully located little place, bearing the 
name of Beddgelert. And in a world which offers 
so many places named from varied degrees of man- 
kind, it is refreshing to find at least one place, and 
so beautiful a place, named from a faithful dog, and 
in remembrance of a national hero's cruel hastiness! 
— for here the famous Llewelyn one day left his child 
in charge of his dog Gelert and, returning, met 
Gelert all covered with blood and instantly killed him, 
thinking he had killed the child, only to find, a few 
moments too late, that Gelert had killed a wolf at 
the child's very side. The very spot where Gelert 
was buried is still pointed out. 

The road led us superbly on, and a little to the 



46 FOUR ON A TOUR 

south we came to the wonderful pass of Aberglasllyn, 
with its tremendous walls of rock, with its rushing 
river and its mighty trees, all overhung by a sky most 
brilliantly blue. And there was such delight in the 
splendid mountain air and in the wonderful exhila- 
ration of it all ! And we went on, following the twist- 
ings and turnings of the road, with a curious sense as 
of turning the elbows of mountains. 

A few miles more of winding, with a constant im- 
pression of retaining walls, and of heights and depths, 
and of streams hurrying in their rocky beds, and of 
all the glory and freedom of the mountains, and of 
grades that were long and easy and of roads that 
were marvelously smooth (as well made, those roads, 
and as well kept, in that lonely and sparsely settled 
region, as they could be in a region of private parks 
and wealthy living!), and all at once we came to an- 
other town, by a precipitous drop of the road through 
a narrow street, with close-built houses up to its very 
edge; our first experience of the sharp descents in 
British roads, where the grades of ancient pack-horse 
days remain; and we went on through a town that 
was dozing in a mid-day rest; a town inhabited, but 
with a positively ghostly effect as of enchantment, 
for there was not a soul to be seen nor a voice to be 
heard. And we reached a long bridge, a toll bridge, 
and we asked the name of the water, imposing in its 
tidal width, over which the long bridge stretched, and 
in reply came consonants in such a sibilant ripple 
as showed us practically that Welsh is still a spoken 
tongue. 

We were approaching Harlech; a name that had 
always gone marching stirringly through our minds, 
although neither of us has any portion of Welsh 
blood. And we were newly stirred, as we went on, 
not only by the fact that we were actually approach- 
ing Harlech, but by the practical realization that it 



ON TO HARLECH 47 

is an actual and existent place and not merely a name 
in a battle song. 

We had come down into a region of miles and miles 
of sweeping yellow sand, and of great salt-water 
meadows that stretched away interminably, for the 
sea was now at hand. And then the road became 
a long, arcaded way, with branches meeting overhead 
of beech and larch trees, with ivy covering their trunks 
and ferns growing thick in the shadows. 

And the road emerged from the tree-made tunnel, 
and beside it were hundreds of hawthorns and rhodo- 
dendrons in bloom; and whirling around a corner 
came an Englishman in an automobile at fifty miles 
an hour, and he neither slowed nor moved to one 
side, but left us to dodge him as best we might. And 
the road led up a long and sweeping grade and we 
were in Harlech, the very town of the " Men of 
Harlech"! 

A village old and poor it is, but with bravery of 
aspect; a village rather bleak, and with a sort of 
swept-bare look ; even three hundred years ago an old 
record set down that it was " a very poore towne, 
having no trade or traphicke"; a village without 
present-day trade or manufactures, and entirely with- 
out the bright new villas that would be fatal to the 
looks of a place with such a reputation; — and the 
roadway was full of little children playing games 
in Welsh. 

Beside the village is the ancient castle, and it was 
standing here when the forever-stirring marching 
song was written. It rises in isolated dignity, from 
its jutting headland of rock. Its noble entrance- way 
leads between round towers, and, once inside, it is 
as if one were back again in the heart of the Middle 
Ages. Its somber, splendid, massive dignity makes 
it, standing four-square upon its noble outlook, a castle 
of one's dreams. And you hear nothing but the 



48 FOUR ON A TOUR 

screaming cries of the seabirds that, disturbed by the 
intrusion of the twentieth century, go circling about 
the towered ruin or diving through impossible cran- 
nies to their nests; nothing but the cries of the birds 
and a sullen booming undertone of sound which is 
the voice of the sea, telling what the Harlech song- 
maker had in mind when he wrote of the " sound like 
rushing billows," and " the surge on surge that rush- 
ing follow, battle's distant sound " ; and here at Har- 
lech the sounds of the sea and of battle have sternly 
commingled. Over yonder is the sea, and you see 
it rippling against the shore in long white-crested 
lines. 

It has a brave old history, this castle, and its great 
inner courtyard was in olden days very different from 
its present aspect, thick grown as it now is with grass 
with daisies pied; a piquant contrast, this, to what 
must have been its fiercely martial aspect when it was 
the last castle in England or Wales to hold out for the 
House of Lancaster and the last in Wales to hold out 
for Charles the First. 

Perhaps its finest story is that, told in ancient 
chronicles, of a siege far back in the 1400's, when it 
was held by a certain David ap Ievan ap Eignion 
against Sir Richard Herbert. Herbert summoned 
David to surrender, but David, who had served a 
great deal in the wars in France, quaintly replied 
that, as he had once held a French fortress long 
enough to make all the old women in Wales talk 
about him, he thought he ought now to hold this 
Welsh fortress long enough for all the old women in 
France to begin talking about him. But in spite of 
quaintly brave words and a defense that was even 
braver, surrender was necessary after all, but Sir 
Richard, mightily impressed by the sturdy qualities 
of David with the two aps, promised to use all pos- 
sible influence with the king to save his life; it being 



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The old oak settle in the inn at Cemmaes 




The clipped box gardens of Powis 




Deer photographed from the motor, in a castle park 




A WINDING STREET IN ANCIENT SHREWSBURY 



ON TO HARLECH 49 

the agreeable custom of those days to kill captives 
who had shown special warlike qualities. But the 
king (it was Edward the Fourth) demurred to the 
appeal, whereupon Sir Richard demanded either that 
the king take his, Sir Richard's, life, in lieu of the 
life of David, or else, better still, that he put David 
back again within the walls of Harlech and set some- 
one else to take him out ! And to such an alternative 
of demand the king, himself a good fighting man, 
with good humor yielded, and David's life was 
saved. 

From the dizzy wall at the precipice edge, Harlech 
Castle looks over great reaches of level plain, far 
below, and across the great sand dunes to the sea that 
goes stretching gloriously to the far horizon; and 
away off to the right there rises a long and mighty 
line of mountains, with summits crenelated against 
the sky. 

And not far away, on a little hillock in view from 
the castle, is an old-looking house which was the house 
of a certain Wynne, a poet who flourished about the 
year 1700, and the people of the town will tell you, 
with enthusiasm, that he was the author of a book 
renowned in literature, " The Vision of the Sleeping 
Bard," or, as they express it — and by this you will 
again feel sure that you are really among the men 
of Harlech — " Gweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsg"! 

But at any rate, as one of us said, our car was cer- 
tainly not a sleeping bard ; and soon we were on our 
way again, soon we were again responding to the 
never-ceasing lure of distances. And we bore with 
us from Harlech an ineffaceable memory. 



CHAPTER VI 

THROUGH SHREWSBURY 

WE were to aim, in a general way, through the 
very heart of Wales and back into England 
by way of Shrewsbury; and we remem- 
bered that it was in this northern portion of Wales 
that Lloyd George was born, and it was interesting 
to notice the absolute devotion with which most of 
the people spoke of him and the malevolence of the 
smaller number who as frankly and as absolutely 
hated him. And as one should always be willing to 
believe an excellent story without too suspiciously 
questioning its details, we were quite willing to be- 
lieve the genial Welshman who said to us that when 
he told an old man, his neighbor, that King Edward 
the Seventh was dead, the old man asked, M Then 
who'll be the new king? " To which our genial ac- 
quaintance of course replied, " George," whereat the 
old man nodded wisely and said: " I'm not surprised; 
no, I'm not surprised; I've watched him ever since 
he was a small boy here and I'm not surprised." 

And now there came the matter of a few very 
pleasant miles along a coastwise road, but the road 
was so narrow and so confined and had such sudden 
and often hairpin curves, in unbelievable number 
that, with the stone walls close on either side, it was 
really very dangerous. And the sea slipped by us 
on the right and the great hills slipped by us on the 
left, and there were ruins and peasants' cottages, and 
numberless rhododendrons on numberless banks — but 
never on a poor man's bank! — and we were in Bar- 

50 



THROUGH SHREWSBURY 51 

mouth, a town that rises, tier above tier, in tall houses 
all clean and bright, a town looking out over the sea 
and curious in having nothing whatever of landward 
view. 

Barmouth is a watering-place and its houses did 
not grow there, but were built for seaside visitors — 
a condition that precludes the romantic and, though 
it should not, even the beautiful. Barmouth is a 
study in contentment ; it is a place without piquancy, 
a place where nothing is going on, where nothing has 
ever gone on ; a place where old ladies and gentlemen 
go about with infinite sedateness and where there is 
a general atmosphere of little walks taken very seri- 
ously, of afternoon teas at inviolable hours and of 
interminable knitting. It is a place where there is 
nothing to do and where the sojourners take delight- 
ful comfort in doing it. Everybody seems so peace- 
fully content that it might well be a town of pussy- 
cats basking in the sun, but it gives positive pleasure 
to the casual American in showing as it does that it 
is possible for the older people to be of consequence 
and that the younger folk and their affairs may well 
be secondary. 

At the edge of Barmouth is a great basin, the 
widened mouth of a tidal river, and we turn our backs 
to the afternoon sun and follow a road beside the 
stream, silvered as it is in the sunlight, that winds 
for miles between broad levels of yellow sand that 
go stretching far off to mountains that are green right 
down to where the yellow sand comes up to them. 

Up in these blue and green mountains we came 
to Dolgelly, an unattractive and bare town in the 
heart of a fascinating region, and all about were lush 
growth and splendid heights that were beautifully 
effective in outline; not Eke the Rockies in height, 
not even equal to the White Mountains, but rising so 
quickly from sea level as to have a tremendous effect 



52 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of far more than their actual altitude. After all, 
Snowdon itself, with its great reputation as a high 
mountain, the highest south of the Scottish line, rises 
only to 3,560 feet! 

We say an unattractive town, and yet Dolgelly 
is a place of individuality, a place that is Welsh for 
the Welsh and not for the English visitor; a place 
where the men walk in heavy-shoed, sober-clad aus- 
terity and where the shovel-hatted clergyman bows 
and is saluted by every passer-by and where the 
market-place is sibilant and murmurous with " ll's," 
this double consonant being pronounced in Welsh by 
beginning as if to pronounce a single " 1 " and turn- 
ing it into a sound as if blowing on hot soup. It is 
a town where Welsh is still a familiar language, and 
yet in this remote Welsh place there is a well- 
uniformed policeman at the end of the market-place 
from whom the stranger may ask questions as to roads 
and be set on his way. 

Not far beyond Dolgelly we were to make a turn 
toward a pass, at Cross Foxes ; — how important these 
catch-points are for the hour ! — and we inquired from 
hard-to-find and hard-to-talk-to laborers who could 
only speak Welsh, and we looked and we worried for 
Cross Foxes — the cross-Fox-River-when-we-come-to- 
it buzzing in our minds. And finally we found it, a 
quiet, very remote inn at a road junction of obscure 
directions which did not fit either the map or the 
policeman's route, but Dinas Mawddwy was our 
destination on the Shrewsbury road. Beyond Dol- 
gelly we had begun to climb, by long sweeps that 
alternated with levels, and it seemed as if we should 
never reach the top. We did not at first realize that 
we were probably climbing the backbone of Wales 
and we certainly learned that Wales had plenty of 
backbone. The water in the radiator would persist 
in boiling now and then as we climbed, and there were 



THROUGH SHREWSBURY 53 

stops for seeking for brooks and springs for refilling 
— as the car panteth after the water brooks, so to 
speak — and each stop gave us occasion and excuse to 
take another long look at the ever-widening view. 
The solitude of the road was very marked; not only 
were there no houses, but there seemed to be few 
travelers. We kept seeing the blue and chair-shaped 
summit of Cader Idris from different points of view 
— the special mountain of this region, as Snowdon is 
the special one of farther north. And we learned in 
this climb a point of much practical importance, 
which was always to keep the bottles of water full, 
for very often in Great Britain water is surprisingly 
hard to find and too often hard when you find it! 
Too often it is undesirable on account of limy qual- 
ity or else is full of peaty or grassy sediment. The 
wayside watering trough for horses is not a British 
institution. 

The car climbed admirably and ever the reward 
was greater and greater in increasing greatness of 
view, until the summit, known as Cold Door Pass 
or Bwich Oerddrws (we chose to call it " Cold 
Door"!), was reached and we looked over miles of 
glory in a glitter of bright sunlight. 

And then came the descent. The ascent had been 
gradual, with its long levels alternating with the ris- 
ing grades, and had been a rise spread over miles and 
always along a two-sided road. But the descent was 
immediate, one-sided, steep; it was a constant and 
steep curving downward on an unprotected road and 
always with the possibility of tumbling far down if 
control of the car should be momentarily lost at one 
of the unexpected curves. The first downward curve 
would have meant a drop of a thousand feet. But 
it was all so glorious! It was rugged and wild and 
of fascinating dreariness, with sweeping views along 
a lovely valley opening in front, and with now and then 



54 FOUR ON A TOUR 

an aeroplanish view of a house nooked solitary, far 
below. 

Night was coming on. We could see the dusky 
twilight gathering in uncanny shadows down in the 
valley and the air was growing chill and we were 
frankly hungry. 

That road was perhaps two miles of unbroken de- 
scent; the trouble is that the explorer never starts 
to measure with the speedometer at the beginning 
of such a road, for at the beginning he does not know 
that he is to be interested in the record. But the floor 
of the valley was safely reached at last, by careful 
driving under compression, and we emerged in a 
region rich in cultivated greenery and in striking con- 
trast with the stern bareness of the summit and with 
the lean pasturage of the descent. 

It was late. It was even late for a land of long- 
lingering twilight, and the dark was rapidly gather- 
ing about us in the valley, and therefore we were 
on the lookout for an attractive inn, but we passed 
at least one which did not measure up externally to 
our ideas of a stopping-place romantic enough for 
such a region. And that is a great advantage of be- 
ing in a motor car ; it so annihilates distance that you 
feel supremely independent as to going on to where 
it pleases you to stop. And we finally came to such 
a place, a tiny wayside and waterside inn of charm. 
But our apparent necessity was strong; the cold, the 
closing in of darkness, a sparsely-settled and still 
more sparsely-inned region in our front — and so the 
highest London prices were promptly quoted us, for 
that little, simple country inn and its simple accom- 
modation. It reminded us of a sign approaching 
a popular resort, at home, announcing that no 
advantage would be taken of motorists more than of 
other guests! 

Without replying, we started on and left the man 



THROUGH SHREWSBURY 55^ 

in his doorway gazing after us with open mouth. And 
if, after a run of miles down the valley, past now 
and then some old yew-shaded church with gleaming 
gravestones, but seldom seeing anywhere a sign of 
hfe, we had not chanced upon an inn, we might have 
regretted scorning the hospitality of the man who had 
tried to take advantage of our need, for it was after 
nine o'clock when we ran into the quiet street of little 
Cemmaes and to our disappointment saw not a sign 
of an inn — literally not a sign. 

But at the end of a length of garden wall was a 
house built at the very sidewalk edge, whose doorway 
was covered by a little stone shelter projecting out- 
ward. There was a light inside, and the door stood 
open. It had a homey, pleasant look as we passed it 
in the deepening dusk and, as we now saw we were 
at the end of the village, it occurred to us that it 
might really be an inn, in spite of its showing no 
sign. 

One of us went back and found that it really was. 
And, although this was only our fourth night out, 
and very many inns, large and small and most of them 
extremely pleasant, were to follow, the great number 
of pleasant inn experiences has not clouded the mem- 
ory of that inn at Cemmaes. 

As we went in we all felt the sense of relief that 
comes to any belated traveler on finding shelter. 
There was an excellent locked garage ; a fire flickered 
up in the grate of the sitting-room ; the bedrooms were 
fresh and cozy, with high-piled beds that promised 
restful slumber; there was hot water brought us in 
shining brass pots. 

Naturally, no meal was ready at the moment, but 
we were told it would be ready soon, and it was. 
There was a picturesque little bar fronted with bowed 
glass in tiny panes, and the bar looked so small that 
we measured it and found it only five feet by five, 



56 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



and it was pleasant to look upon, with its shin- 
ing glasses and brasses and its tankards of pewter. 
And there was a stone-paved taproom with a fireplace 
and a great semicircular settle of oak, old, high- 
backed, paneled and wax-polished. 

On the stairs ticked an old-time grandfather's 
clock; and the late supper was in a low-set room, 
entered by a doorway behind the tall taproom settle; 
a cozy room, which we found, in the morning at break- 
fast, opened out with glass doors into an adorable 
walled garden. 

The cooking was simple and excellent; the little 
maid was neat and brisk and cheerful. The coffee 
was good — an unexpected touch, this last — and the 
name of the landlady was a delight, for it was Pru- 
dence Jones! And she was all that the possessor of 
such a name ought to be. 

It interested us, in talking with some Cemmaes 
people, to learn that the region through which we 
had just passed was at one time so infested with red- 
haired robbers that the quiet people of Cemmaes used 
to build scythes in their chimneys to prevent the rob- 
bers from coming down in the night. Whereupon we 
pleased ourselves vastly by thinking that we remem- 
bered that a certain disappointed man had red hair. 

We may as well confess that we did not know until 
next morning where we were. We heard the name of 
the village, but the Welsh have a habit of not pro- 
nouncing as well as they spell! They spell elabo- 
rately and beautifully! And in the morning we 
copied the name from the postoffice sign — Cemmaes 
— and reconciled it to the pronunciation, which was 
remindful of an apothecary's shop! 

Shortly after we left, the next morning, a light 
drizzling of rain came on, but it is not entirely a joke 
to say that an ordinary rain is not so wet in England 
t as it is in America, for there really is no other way 



THROUGH SHREWSBURY 57 

to express it; and women were scrubbing the stone 
walks in front of their cottages in the rain, stone cot- 
tages that solitarily dotted the roadside, cottages 
casement-windowed, and of a wonderful whiteness 
that contrasted markedly with the deep green of the 
fields in which they were set. We were on the point 
of stopping to put up the top of the car when the 
drizzle ceased, and we went on over a low, bleak pass 
and emerged upon a great and hill-encircled plain, 
and came to Newtown, a little manufacturing place 
for fine flannel, really new about a hundred years 
ago. 

Shortly beyond Newtown is the Severn River, a 
gentle stream flowing through a broad and pleasant 
valley with hills rising in slow slopes; and the road 
of tar-macadam, level as a board and literally swept 
with brooms, even far out in the country, led for miles 
between low hedges of blooming hawthorn and wild 
roses and beside great fields yellow with buttercups 
and with fine clumps of trees. 

Welshpool was the next town, a busy, pleasant 
place, and leading right off the busy main street we 
found a lane leading into the park of Powis Castle. 
It was all so simple ; there was not even a lodge, but 
an old man ran to open the gate of the park. We 
had been told by a policeman, always the reliable dis- 
penser of local facts, that the park was freely open 
to the public even with motor cars. 

It was a wonderful ride of a mile from the busy 
town street to the old Powis Castle. We passed a 
pool filled with pond lilies, and ponds with curious 
waterfowl; there were thrushes singing joyously, and 
mighty oak trees, and charming glades where scores 
of exquisite deer, with their horns in the velvet stage, 
were lying down or wandering about. It was so mar- 
velous, all this, so sweetly sylvan so near a busy town, 
and it was clear that motor cars were not common 



58 FOUR ON A TOUR 

there, for the deer hardly noticed our presence; but 
we did, indeed, go through the park very slowly and 
quietly, appreciating the absolute peace and beauty 
of it all. 

We came in front of the great red stone castle — 
a castle stately and fine, dating back for a satisfac- 
tory number of centuries, still lived in, richly kept up 
and with marvelous terraced gardens round about, 
terraced gardens dropping away from the castle-knoll 
in line after line of beauty. 

There were stately peacocks, there were trees trim- 
clipped into cones with geometrical care, there were 
masses of yew and there were wonderful areas of 
bright-green box with tops trimmed actually to the 
smoothness of a lawn ; and one great triangle in par- 
ticular, one hundred feet long on each of its sides, 
was a solid mass of turf-smooth box, kept clipped by 
men on boards. 

Beyond Welshpool the Severn Valley broadens 
and we pass the border line back into England and 
are in Shropshire. A striking mountain that has 
been seen for miles takes possession of the landscape 
and dominates it. We reached the mountain and 
rounded its point and glided by its base and were out 
into a great plain and on toward Shrewsbury. Above 
the plain arose a low-lying hill and it was topped with 
trees, and above the trees arose a tall and narrow 
spire which marked the city. 

We approached Shrewsbury through a rich and 
lovely land, passing many an estate of richness; and 
there are so very, very many in England! Now and 
then we passed a little cottage with thatched roof 
weathered by age, and there were thick-wheeled 
wagons on the country road, and soon we were run- 
ning up Shrewsbury hill, bending our way past old 
houses whose projecting stories doddered over the 
street; old, old half-timbered houses, with their 



THROUGH SHREWSBURY 59 

ancient fronting beams vividly black and white in 
lozenges, crosses and squares. In Shrewsbury, no- 
table as it is with such old houses, one readily sees 
why the English term that ancient style of architec- 
ture " black and white." 

We went by the stately old castle, now become 
shabby and out of place through its railway-station 
surroundings, and we stopped for a little at the busi- 
est corner, for there once stood the high cross of the 
city, at which spot the dead body of the famous 
Hotspur, Harry Percy, after he was killed at the 
Battle of Shrewsbury, was exposed to the public view 
between two millstones to show that both the insur- 
rection and its leader were crushed. It was here, too, 
at this now extremely thronged and busy corner that 
the last Welsh Prince of Wales was beheaded after 
being captured and it was this particular happening 
in Shrewsbury that gave a chance for Edward's jest 
about the new Prince of Wales who could speak not 
a word of English. Perhaps in those days millstones 
themselves were a sort of jest, too. 

Near this spot is a particularly interesting row of 
the old black-and-white buildings; Butchers' Row, 
it is called, but without any reference to such little 
incidents of feudal life as have just been mentioned. 

We all of us wanted to taste the Shrewsbury cakes, 
such being the influence of reputation, but like many 
another reputation we found it ill-deserved, for the 
present-day cakes are only common, white, sugar 
cookies, too sweet, large-sized and not good. If they 
did not bear the magic name of Shrewsbury cakes, 
they would sell, like other little cakes in England, 
at six for threepence, but as it is they sell at six for 
a shilling, sealed in a round pasteboard box. 

Shrewsbury, although at the very edge of Wales, 
is not popular with the Welsh, who hold a grudge 
against it, but not because of the Shrewsbury ending 



60 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of the last Welsh Prince of Wales, for that was long 
ago forgotten. It seems that Shrewsbury long since 
became an active center for Welsh trade and that it 
was a favorite place for the marketing of Welsh flan- 
nel, which was all measured by the buyers at the old 
market house, still standing, of Elizabethan days, 
around a drum just one yard in circumference, so 
that each revolution was exactly a yard; and it was 
long before the Welsh discovered that, although the 
first revolution was a yard, each succeeding revolu- 
tion was more than a yard and so on increasingly; 
and they were so angry when they came to realize 
this that they drew away their flannel trade and their 
friendship ! 

There are excellent old churches in Shrewsbury, 
but one most notices the one whose tall spire is such 
a landmark, St. Mary's, with its exquisite window 
over the altar. There is an Edward the Sixth gram- 
mar school in the city, and wherever there is an Ed- 
ward the Sixth grammar school one expects to find 
English celebrities connected with it, and here both 
Darwin and Sir Philip Sidney were pupils, and the 
reflection comes that Sidney, in that bit of dying 
courtesy on the battlefield, was of more good to the 
world in his example of unselfishness than was Dar- 
win with all his wisdom. It is odd, too, that Judge 
Jeffreys was educated here ; clearly, schools know no 
distinction between the famous and the infamous. 

We spent in the city more than Falstaff's " hour 
by Shrewsbury clock," for we lunched there at an 
esthetic little restaurant overlooking the river, which 
made specialties of " chips and peas " and " fish 
snacks"; and they cut our salmon from a lordly 
fish. 

We entered the city over a bridge and we went out 
over another bridge, for the Severn almost encircles 
Shrewsbury ; and we noticed as we motored away that 



THROUGH SHREWSBURY 61 

this city, with so much of the medieval, has even 
medieval debris, for we passed by an ancient stone 
pulpit, of admirable design and workmanship as well 
as of great age, that stands out, bare and abandoned, 
in its original position, although the church of which 
it was part has long since absolutely disappeared and 
left it there, and a coal yard occupies the churchly 
site and surrounds the pulpit with heaps of coal ! 



CHAPTER VII 

THE WAY TO WORCESTER 

WE crossed the Severn on a beautiful stone 
bridge, a bow-curved bridge of seven arches, 
and we went on into a charming region, and 
there were rabbits hopping across the fields and 
pheasants flitting and hunters or gamekeepers with 
their guns and there were cattle wading in the streams 
and there was a succession of wide and beautiful views 
over an idyllic countryside. 

The Severn coquettishly continued with us, now 
tantalizing from a distance and now coming coyly up, 
and suddenly there was an enchanting surprise, for 
on the other side of the stream there appeared a beau- 
tiful ruin; the ruin of an ancient abbey almost hid- 
den among vines and trees, and what we could see 
was a long row of low-pillared arches and a fragmen- 
tary square tower. We stopped the car, and looked 
across the river with a great deal of joy. There was 
no bridge, but we did not wish for a bridge ; although 
there are times when one wishes to wander through 
every part of a ruin, there are other times when there 
is sheer delight in a provocative vision. That abbey 
ruin, shyly hiding among glorious elms beside the 
copious river, was a delight. 

It was a region of ancient farmhouses and of cot- 
tages with roofs so oddly thatched, in curves over the 
second-story windows, as to look precisely like eye- 
brows over eyes; and there were roses trained on 
the cottage fronts thick with blossoms of pale yellow 
and blushing pink; and many humble cottages had 



THE WAY TO WORCESTER 63 

trees trimmed intricately, a favorite diversion of the 
countryside being to take a cone-shaped yew and 
trim it into alternate layers of slice and space till it 
looks like a series of great disks threaded on the trunk ; 
and sets of trees so trimmed are frequently seen in 
cottage dooryards. And then we came into a manu- 
facturing district and there was a queer-looking iron 
bridge, high in the middle, stretching across the val- 
ley; and the town beside the bridge we found to be 
named Iron Bridge, in the bridge's honor, because 
this was the first successful bridge of iron ever built. 
And it seemed typical of England that it should re- 
main there, still standing and still used after these 
many years, and it will probably still be standing and 
used after many another year, for it has obtained a 
sort of prescriptive right to existence. In some other 
parts of the world it would long ago have been re- 
placed by a newer and better bridge, but perhaps 
there is a great deal of good sense, after all, in the 
saving of needless expense. 

There is much of hilly country hereabouts, making 
long and steady climbs, and we began to realize, much 
to our astonishment, that England is not a level coun- 
try, but a hilly country. We expected Wales to be 
hilly, but not such parts of England as this. The 
grades, although not difficult, were frequently quite 
long enough for a mountainous country. 

And we noticed, here in this manufacturing dis- 
trict, that the towns are close-packed and that the 
houses of the working folk cling to steep banks like 
birds'-nests huddled close and tight; and that on the 
level ground round about, and right up to the tight- 
huddled houses, were the smiling estates of the 
wealthy; one does not see natural development, in a 
healthful, long stretching-off from towns in lines of 
suburban cottages and gardens. 

It is a region of mines and porcelain-makers here- 



64 FOUR ON A TOUR 

abouts ; and we are still in Shropshire — still in Salop, 
as the people absurdly call it, although why they call 
it Salop they do not know; in fact, they seem never 
to have thought of it ; their parents and grandparents 
called Shropshire Salop and so Salop it is. And to 
find porcelain-makers here is remindful of porcelain 
collectors at home who, when shown some piece not 
marked and not clearly assignable as to class, look 
wise and say, delighting in the mystifying name: 
" Oh! it is probably Salopian! " 

We entered again into a fine rural region, for the 
system that keeps people in the towns does at least 
keep the country beautiful. And, although we knew 
we were now approaching another town of consider- 
able size, with mills and slag and mine refuse like 
those of Iron Bridge and vicinity, it was as if they 
had never existed, for we were in the midst of sweet 
loveliness, and the road swept by a bordering of red- 
rock cliff, and over our heads great beeches arched, 
and then we were in Bridgnorth. 

If we were to describe Bridgnorth in proper order, 
we ought to begin with the date of its founding and 
then go on in regular sequence ; but we begin with the 
fact that at eleven o'clock in our inn, the closing hour, 
two cats and two dogs came up and began to wander 
about the corridors and stairways with all the solem- 
nity of a medieval watch. And we next come to the 
" boots," for " boots " was a joy! in waistcoat of bril- 
liant yellow-and-black such as Sam Weller himself 
might have worn. 

Having mentioned the dogs and the cats and the 
" boots," we may now add that the inn had attractive 
features, such as ancient beamed ceilings and an 
oriel window and a window-seat in the dining-room 
which makes anyone who sees it wish to go home and 
build one like it. 

Bridgnorth is one of the overlooked towns of Eng- 



THE WAY TO WORCESTER 65 

land. And as a matter of fact there are a high town 
and a low town, and one precisely overlooks the other 
so delightfully that Charles the First remarked, of 
the walk along the upper edge, that it was the finest 
walk in the Kingdom; and even if he never said pre- 
cisely that, or if he said it only as a pleasant bit of 
flattery, a walk which gives rise to such a story must 
needs be remarkable ; and it is. 

The high town and low town are divided by a river 
and a bridge, and the low town is the place, for very 
practical reasons, for motorists to stop, for the easiest 
way to see the high town is to leave your motor car 
below and go up yourself by an inclined road which 
is run by the simple principle of the weight of one car 
balancing the other. And to the query, " When does 
it go? " the answer is, such being the delightful oblig- 
ingness of the people, " Whenever you are ready." — 
And the round trip costs, for one person, just a penny 
and a half! 

Many of the streets are mere narrow stone walks 
or stairways, and everywhere there is an exquisite 
cleanliness, and there are numerous old houses, in- 
cluding the house in which lived good old Percy of 
Percy's " Reliques." — And somehow it pleases us to 
see such a sign as " Horse Repository " and the de- 
lightful incongruity of " Fish, Fruit and Rabbits." 

As Bridgnorth cannot boast an Edward the Sixth 
grammar school, it triumphantly boasts of one ante- 
dating the time of the Sixth Edward. And this city 
thinks quite as much of its mayoresses, as it calls 
them, as it does of its mayors; and if you are shown 
the town regalia — and they love to show it ! — there is 
not only, as part of it, a mayor's chain with the names 
of successional mayors engraved upon it, but also 
the mayoresses' chain, with the names of successional 
mayoresses. All of which adds to the gayety of 
Salop. And it is delightful too to find that the maces 



66 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of the regalia are, for civic banquets, transformed into 
loving cups, and that the ancient building of Eliza- 
bethan days, in the center of the main street of the 
upper town, was originally a barn, moved there two 
and a half centuries ago and transformed into a town- 
hall. Clearly, a clever folk these, and adaptable. 

And the superb walk of Charles the First leads be- 
side all that is left of the ancient castle; a castle of 
almost the time of William the Conqueror; once a 
tremendous old place, but with nothing now left but 
a huge fragment, fascinating in its tippable interest, 
for in the matter of leaning it out-Pisas Pisa. 

But the motorist leaves a new-discovered old city 
behind just as he leaves everything else behind; for- 
ever the call is onward; and we pass road traction- 
engines hauling merchandise from town to town, their 
ambition seeming to be to haul bigger loads than do 
the tiny little boxes on wheels that are the railroad 
freight cars of England. Always, in England, a 
railroad freight train looks like something from a 
Swiss toy-shop. So great a feature are the traction 
freight caravans on the highroads of England that 
every bridge is marked with the number of tons that 
may be handled in one transit. 

And we find steam rollers for road repair frequent, 
as everywhere thus far, with road repair material left 
in large piles by the roadside for laborers to hammer 
by hand into fragments, and frequently there is the 
man himself, astride the pile, hammering. It is pos- 
sible that there are steam-crushers in England, but 
labor is cheap, and this fact fosters the belief that 
hand-broken stone lasts better than machine broken. 

Past ivy-covered mansions, past Tudor chimneys, 
past moss-roofed cottages, past peacocks clipped from 
yew with great spread of tail and paired across gate- 
ways! — maybe these were gardeners' homes or those 
of professional hedge-cutters, but the peacocks were 



THE WAY TO WORCESTER 67 

superbly ornamental — and we pass a wayside inn 
with the diverting sign, as if in defiance of proverbial 
philosophy, of " Beer and Skittles." 

Then we spin easily into prosperous Kidderminster 
with almost an unformed expectation of seeing car- 
pets on either side; and, practical eity that it is, it 
has a very-practically-put-up monument to the origi- 
nator of the Penny Post; and, more unexpectedly, 
the author of Baxter's " Saints' Rest " stands in full 
robes of white marble, blessing the traffic in a curved 
place delightfully named the Bull Ring; but Kidder- 
minster, though it may be saintly, is far from being 
a saints' rest, with its busy streets crowded with huge 
drays laden with linen warp and wool sacks, and 
thickly thronged not only with vehicles but peo- 
ple. A market-woman at one end of the seat of a 
high-perched, two-wheeled cart, her husband at the 
other and three children in between, farm wagons 
piled high with wicker baskets or alive with lively 
chickens held in by the excellent expedient of rope 
nets — and suddenly we saw a small lump of coal drop 
from a coal cart, whereupon a little, old woman, im- 
maculately neat and decently and cleanly dressed, 
darted out into the midst of the busy traffic ; it was a 
miracle she was not run over; seized the coal, which 
was so little that she picked up all its four fragments 
in one hand, dropped them into her little shopping 
satchel and went quickly back to the sidewalk. Eng- 
land has certainly learned frugality. 

A compact town is Kidderminster, like practically 
every other town in Great Britain, with extension 
into the country so grudgingly barred by the land- 
owners that almost with phantasmagoric swiftness we 
were past some great factories and across the river 
Stour and were in an enchanting country of great, 
green regions, with seldom a house, with few people, 
with the impression of almost a deserted land, but 



68 FOUR ON A TOUR 

beautifully hedged and splendidly roaded and with 
miles and miles of grazing country or private parks. 

Seldom are farmers seen cultivating a field ; in this 
the general English countryside being very different 
not only from that of America, but that of conti- 
nental Europe. The plowing, when you do see it, is 
likely to be uneconomically done with three horses 
abreast, but the same farmer, if you meet him hauling 
a load to town, is behind two horses tandem, and the 
wagon itself is a tremendous weight to pull even when 
unloaded, the English not having yet found out that 
lightness may be strength. 

It is a great grazing country hereabouts, and the 
beef and pork and mutton of the countryside travel 
to town on foot, drovers' time being cheaper than rail- 
road charges. A constant feature of motoring in 
England is the passing of market-driven animals on 
the road. 

And old men sweeping the country roads and men 
with short-handled sickles cutting the grass along the 
wayside are familiar sights — and we haven't yet seen 
a single scythe. 

We pass into Worcestershire and are in a region 
more attractive and more parklike than before; not 
that we knew precisely when we left one shire for the 
other, because few maps show a shire or county line, 
and few of the English themselves know much about 
them, but we knew that we had been in Shropshire 
and that after a while we were in Worcestershire and 
we knew just about where the division line lay. 

That some of the county names end in " shire," and 
some do not, is because some of the counties, such as 
Essex and Kent, still mark the limits of ancient king- 
doms, whereas others have been " shired " or sheared 
off; Worcestershire, for example, was shired from 
ancient Mercia. And another interesting thing about 
counties is that, as the word came from France, the 



THE WAY TO WORCESTER 69 

title of " count " meant naturally the ruler of a county 
in early times, but that England positively would not 
permanently adopt " count," although willing to re- 
tain " county," and still holds the ruler of a county 
to be an earl ; but that the wives of the earls, probably 
from feminine love for things French, hold to the 
title " countess " — all of which seems delightfully in- 
consistent for a people who above all things pride 
themselves on consistency. 

Worcestershire is a sweet and smiling county ; there 
are great levels and rich farms, and magnificent es- 
tates and hedges, and great homes and thatched cot- 
tages, and geraniums thick in the windows, and 
mighty orchards with the trees whitewashed up to 
their very branches; one remembers that the Crom- 
wellian soldiers from London wrote home with aston- 
ishment about the fruit trees full of fruit, even over- 
hanging the roads. And one sees an astonishing 
number of elms ; indeed, the elm is so common as to be 
called the weed of Worcestershire; but it is not the 
graceful wineglass elm of America, but the stocky, 
good-looking English elm with which we are familiar 
on Boston Common. 

Worcestershire seems to be dominated by a delight- 
ful green, for it is all of a peculiar delicate green 
loveliness; it is thus we remember that softly beau- 
tiful region, with its green hedging, its church spires 
reaching through the thick massed green of trees, its 
old cottages with green shrubs all about, its clipped 
green peacocks looking at us across entrance-gates 
and its great green fields in softly sweeping undula- 
tions. But not everything is green, for there are 
often, in cottage gardens, tree roses and Oriental pop- 
pies fit for palaces. 

There are little villages, such as Ormsley, with the 
general impression of nothing but ancient black-and- 
white half-timbered houses; and some of the houses 



70 FOUR ON A TOUR 

are not timbered but only of brick, but the brick has 
been whitened and black bars and braces have been 
painted on, to give the appearance of timber. 

On the country road you meet women driving high- 
set market carts, and you meet an astonishing num- 
ber of well-dressed girls, in green jerseys, pegging 
along, cane in hand, enjoying the national exercise. 
The sleek cats are a feature of Worcestershire vil- 
lages, and are everywhere drowsing in doorways or 
on window-sills, unless they are hazardously crossing 
the road immediately in front of your motor car. 

And it may be remarked that the county is not 
named after the sauce ! — and that, incredible as it may 
seem, we saw quite as much of an American brand of 
Worcestershire sauce in Worcestershire as we did of 
the English brand in Worcestershire. But there is a 
section of the city of Worcester that is quite redolent 
of the pungent spicy smell. 

We reached the city of Worcester and motored 
through its streets with the restful impression that, 
although it was busy, it was not too hurriedly busy; 
it somehow gave an impression of being busy, in an 
old-fashioned way, with affairs of importance; and, 
after all, through its world-famous establishments for 
making sauce, gloves and porcelain, it maintains a 
prominent position. 

It was Saturday morning, and so we motored first 
to the famous porcelain factory, for the motor trav- 
eler, with his limited time for each place, must learn 
to watch for the closing of Saturday afternoon and 
Sunday and even of those mysterious English orgies 
known as bank holidays, and must try so to manage 
his schedule as not to let these times make him miss 
things of importance. 

We were told that we could have a special guide 
through the factory in an hour or so, whereupon we 
went to the cathedral, a noble structure, huge and no- 



THE WAY TO WORCESTER 71 

tably beautiful, the finest cathedral thus far on our 
journey, a cathedral with a fine exterior and with an 
interior that is really imposing and grand, with 
mighty pillars and a superb length of vista. 

There was scarcely a particle of old glass or brass 
left by the Reformation in this cathedral, for, in the 
old days, to reform meant too often to destroy; one 
really wonders why, when they destroyed so much, 
they left standing the great religious buildings them- 
selves. 

Even worse than breaking the glass and tearing 
away the brass was the plastering and whitewashing 
of the great interior of this cathedral ; except that this 
pernicious white could be cleaned off, and it has been. 
But what an enormous work it was, putting it all on ! 
And the most curious thing is that anyone should go 
to such trouble to plaster and whitewash. And, al- 
though extensive cleaning off has been done, the ef- 
fects of the pernicious white are still in some places 
to be seen. 

It interested us, among the monuments of this 
cathedral, to find one which proudly boasted, of an 
entire family of the early 1600's, that they were 
" Here born, here bred, here buried " ; a typically in- 
sular boast, this, of the English before their days of 
empire-building. 

On the whole, much though we admired the cathe- 
dral, we got a very great proportion of our pleasure 
from the verger who showed us about, he being a veiy 
jewel of a guide. He was never weary of describing, 
and was disappointed if we did not wish to see every- 
thing — and he was such a conscientious man! He 
showed an effigy, in gilded stone, of King John, the 
oldest royal effigy remaining in Great Britain and in 
marvelously perfect condition through having been 
long out of sight ; in fact, it required an act of Parlia- 
ment to have it brought out to its present place; and 



72 FOUR ON A TOUR 

it being so fresh looking, the verger was asked if the 
effigy was made at the time of King John's death. 

"Oh! quite so; — or, no — let me see — no, sir," — a 
distinct note of disappointment in his voice: "King 
John died in 1214, sir, and this effigy was not made 

until me." 

The effigy shows the king with his nose a little 
rubbed and with a queer beast, in stone, at his feet 
that is neither lion nor griffin nor armadillo, but a 
little like each, and it holds the tip of John's sword 
in its mouth. 

The verger spoke so frequently of the condition of 
various parts of the cathedral " before the fire " that 
we asked solicitously after a while, " When was this 
fire? " only to find that he referred to a fire in the 
year 1208. Verily a thousand years are but as yester- 
day to a verger! 

He wandered back again to the subject of King 
John and said that he could not even write his own 
name, or at least that he did not when he signed the 
Magna Charta; " he made his cross," he said. It was 
suggested that he probably made his cross because 
it expressed the way he felt; but one should never 
offer even a mild pleasantry to an English verger. 

The tomb of the widow of Izaak Walton is here, 
with the inscription that Izaak himself sadly wrote: 
"Alas, she is dead! A woman of remarkable pru- 
dence and of the primitive piety," so he declared, 
" adorned with true humility and blessed with Chris- 
tian meekness. Study to be like her " — an admoni- 
tion not likely to be taken with great seriousness by 
the suffragettes of to-day. 

We thought, as we looked up at the cathedral from 
the outside, of that most interesting of all the events 
that had ever happened here ; for Charles the Second 
watched the Battle of Worcester from the cathedral 
tower. Few men have the experience of looking idly 




The tipping castle at Bridgnorth 




A LITTLE DRIZZLE IN BRIDGNORTH MARKETPLACE 




■ 




Old black-and-white houses, with passion flowers, at Ormsley 




Worcester Cathedral from the river 



Jk 



THE WAY TO WORCESTER 73 

on while others fight and die for them. But he amply 
rewarded Worcester — or at least he thought that he 
did — for he gave to the city, after he finally came to 
his throne, a motto to put upon the city arms. 

Our incomparable verger, hearing one of us say 
that we were going back to the china factory from the 
cathedral, gave us a final pleasurable experience, for 
he borrowed from another verger a key and led us 
through a long and fascinating cloistered, shadowy 
path, at the end of which he opened an iron grill and 
let us out to reach the factory by a very short cut. 

The great porcelain factory of Worcester is really 
of more intrinsic importance than the cathedral, for 
the factory, in its notable artistic history, stands at 
the head of all the porcelain factories of England, 
whereas the cathedral, beautiful as it is, is not of the 
very first importance. While we were in the cathe- 
dral we had, at the suggestion of the factory manager, 
who said it would be carefully looked after, left our 
car in the courtyard of the works, a shrub-bordered 
and pleasant place, with notices everywhere that the 
employees were absolutely forbidden to accept 
gratuities. 

To go to a factory where famous old porcelain was 
made in the periods most highly regarded by col- 
lectors, and where fine porcelain is still made, is the 
last word in the study of that ware. The factory has 
a show-room for the new and a museum with per- 
fectly arranged examples, in periods, of all their 
manufactures. There is no vagueness; there are no 
doubts — they know whereof they speak and the tradi- 
tions of the factory are a matter of pride. In addi- 
tion they most courteously show all the processes of 
manufacture, and it is interesting to see that, except 
in the mills and mixing rooms, there is not the hustle 
and bustle of machinery, but the unexpected order- 
liness and quiet of handwork. But that it would be 



74 FOUR ON A TOUR 

impossible to do everything by hand may be inferred 
from the fact that the grinding of the different mate- 
rials varies from twelve hours to ten days, after which 
they are passed through silk lawn with about ten thou- 
sand meshes to the square inch ; or at least so we were 
told. 

It was interesting, in these works, to notice that 
women, except those of the art-student type who do 
some decorating, are employed at tasks requiring 
nothing more than automatic skill, the better work 
being given over to the men ; the master- workmen be- 
ing mostly sallow, round-shouldered, mustached, ca- 
pable and very quiet, but not particularly alert of 
aspect. 

It was very interesting indeed to see how much is 
trusted to the eye and hand in these days of machin- 
ery, and that machinery cannot take the place of the 
finest machine of all, the human hand. When one at 
length leaves the factory it is with a strong impres- 
sion of the individuality of both old and new Worces- 
ter porcelain; and Doctor Wall and the Chamber- 
lains, the old-time makers, now seem like old friends. 

With a final glance at the great cathedral, with a 
final sniff of the aromatic and spicy air of genuine 
Worcestershire, we go whirling again on our way. 
And, leaving the old city, we go past a soldier with 
red-striped trousers teaching a pretty maid how to 
ride her bicycle and seeming not at all displeased with 
the job, past donkey carts, past houses of beehive 
windows and old houses of ancient brick, and avenues 
of tremendous elms; and we remembered having 
somewhere heard that one of the Gunpowder Plot 
conspirators, after being condemned to death, was re- 
prieved on condition of going to Worcestershire and 
never leaving there, and that he lived for forty years 
thereafter within that county. We thought it was 
no wonder! 



CHAPTER VIII 

BY TEWKESBURY 

WE came to a river where young men in cap 
and gown were looking on at other young 
men, without cap and gown, who were pre- 
paring for boat-racing practice. The caps and 
gowns, and also the extremely sketchy costumes, if 
they could fairly be called costumes, all seemed a 
natural part of the landscape of a country where 
schools and sports are among the most prominent 
features. Coaches, male not mail, megaphones in 
hand, looked very stilted and stiff and important be- 
cause of a number of pretty girls that looked on 
big-eyed. Across the river beyond the broad 
meadows arose a massive tower, and we knew that 
it was the tower of Tewkesbury Abbey and that the 
town on the other side was Tewkesbury itself. 

We went up a street extremely broad, consid- 
ering that it was the main street of an ancient town, 
and it was bordered with low houses on either side 
and, naturally enough, with a noticeable sprinkling 
of ancient and interesting inns; we say naturally 
enough because it was at one of these Tewkesbury 
inns that Mr. Pickwick spent an exceedingly pleas- 
ant time, according to Mr. Pickwick's chronicler, in 
the course of which there was served, among other 
things, " more bottled ale, with some more Madeira 
and some port besides " ; also that " the case-bottle 
was replenished for the fourth time," under the influ- 
ence of which combined stimulants " Mr. Pickwick 
and Mr. Ben Allen fell fast asleep for thirty miles, 
while Bob and Mr. Weller sang duets in the dickey." 

75 



76 FOUR ON A TOUR 

It was at the very edge of this ancient town that 
the Battle of Tewkesbury was fought; one of the 
greatest struggles in that random round of fighting 
known as the Wars of the Roses; a battle deemed of 
tremendous importance at the time, but which has 
probably left no more definite memory than that of 
the lines, themselves of no particular importance, but 
which remain persistently in one's memory as Shake- 
speare's even ordinary lines have such a habit of 
doing, about the " false, fleeting, perjured Clarence 
that stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury." And 
it is one of the curious things that the body of Clar- 
ence should have been brought to Tewkesbury for 
burial; and how little anyone could have imagined 
that, instead of the lengthy and laudatory drawn-out 
inscription telling of titles and honors, placed upon 
that tomb, the world remembers only these few con- 
demnatory words. 

There are other memorials more important and 
interesting than that of Clarence, particularly the 
beautiful piece of work which has come to be called, 
through the irony of time, the Warwick Chapel; for 
this was built five hundred years ago by the widowed 
countess of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Aber- 
gavenny, and she spared no care and expense in 
beautifying it with lacework in stone and tender 
coloring; and the irony comes from the fact that 
the work was not quite completed when the sorrow- 
ing Isabelle married her late husband's cousin, the 
Earl of Warwick, who not only gave the widow his 
name, but gave name to the very memorial itself! — 
which really seems to have been rather hard on the 
first husband, who could not even call his grave 
his own. 

But here again we see that we do not talk of our 
travels in an orthodox and time-honored way, for we 
are actually discussing the tombs of the abbey of 



BY TEWKESBURY 77 

Tewkesbury before we come to the abbey itself. But 
it is not in the least in disregard of the abbey, which, 
standing at the farther end of the town and shaded 
by enormous blossoming horse-chestnut trees so thick 
and so big as to give the interior a twilight gloom 
even in the bright sun, is one of the most important 
churchly edifices in all England. 

This is indeed a noble building, with the splendid 
massiveness of the very best of the ancient Norman 
style; it is not only massive but beautiful, and not 
only beautiful but of superb impressiveness. That 
much of the stone used in building was actually car- 
ried here from Normandy may have subtly aided in 
giving it the Norman air and the Norman feeling. 

The enormous square tower, rising with magnifi- 
cent dignity, and the splendid interior of the abbey, 
with its huge plain columns, its somberness, its dig- 
nity, are never to be forgotten for stern and inflexible 
effectiveness. 

We did not stay long in Tewkesbury. We felt to 
the full the tremendous impressiveness of the abbey 
with its superb tower and its wonderfully arched 
front and its great pillars all looking just as they 
did to the Normans of so many centuries ago; but 
we wished to leave with that impression unforget- 
table. The abbey is one of the buildings whose mem- 
ory is never blurringly confused in even the slightest 
degree with the memory of any other abbey or cathe- 
dral. It stands all by itself. 

Yet Tewkesbury is another of the overlooked 
places of England, and this is because it is a little off 
the main line of railway and is reached only by a 
branch, which thus keeps it off the natural list of 
stopping-places of tourists who are tied to tourists' 
schedules. Our visit to Tewkesbury was one of the 
most striking examples of the opportunities that open 
to those who go by motor. 



78 FOUR ON A TOUR 

Before leaving the place it is worth while saying, 
for it is an admirable point, that ancient as Tewkes- 
bury Abbey is, it is thoroughly up to date and busi- 
nesslike in its reception of such visitors as go there. 
There are four set hours each day at which a salaried 
verger shows visitors through the abbey without 
gratuity, and those who wish to go at any other hour 
may engage him for a small fee or go through by 
themselves and read the cards descriptively placed on 
the tombs and in the chapels. And it is an agreeable 
point for the motorist that there is at the abbey 
entrance-gate an official attendant who will watch 
a motor car, while the visitors are in the abbey, for 
what is certainly the modest sum of one penny. Thus 
there is a variety of reasons why no motorist should 
allow Tewkesbury to remain an un visited place! 

While we were at Tewkesbury we knew that our 
route was planned to bring us very near this place 
on our north-bound distance, many days later, and 
we could not but wonder what Fate had in store for 
us in the many intervening miles over which we were 
to go ; and it is pleasantly anticipating a little to say 
that when we did pass near here again it was after 
experiences even more delightful and a journeying 
even more successful than we could possibly have 
hoped. 

We left Tewkesbury without a long stay, not only 
because, as we have said, we wished a brief and vivid 
impression that could by no possibility be lessened, 
but because of another reason which would have hur- 
ried our departure in any case; and this was that 
Gloucester, which was our next objective point, was 
where all of us were to receive mail, and that as it 
was a Saturday we must get there before the noon 
closing. And this experience warned us not to have 
mail forwarded in care of banks, but to have it sent 
in care of the poste restante of postoffices, for this 



BY TEWKESBURY 79 

would give us the opportunity of getting mail even 
in the early morning or the early evening, as well as 
to some extent on Sundays, instead of holding us in 
any degree to banking hours. As to the banks and 
the getting of money, we carried with us checks of 
a kind that were cashable practically anywhere, even 
at the hotels. 

It was an eleven-miles' run to Gloucester, follow- 
ing the ever-broadening Severn, and for part of the 
distance we motored along a low-rising ridge that 
gave us pleasant, sweeping views of the regulated 
landscape; and that is really the only expression for 
it, for it seemed really a regulated landscape, as do 
the landscapes of the greater part of England ; there 
is a certain orderliness, as of their having had the care 
of many centuries, which is apparent even in almost 
the wildest regions. Again we were passing cot- 
tages with splendid roses upon their fronts, and again 
we were passing the half-timbered black-and-white 
houses — and these should be admired not only for 
their own delightful sake, but because this part of 
England is their stronghold, and after a while we 
were to miss their crisscrossings, their color contrasts, 
their quaintly simple intricacy of design. Yet al- 
ways through England there is something of interest 
to fill their place. 

Gloucester is a modestly and earnestly busy place, 
with a fine air of civic dignity. The great cathedral, 
which has dominated the city for miles as we ap- 
proached it, seems to have hidden coyly away, now 
that we have actually entered the town, and the route 
to it must be searched for; but the English police- 
man, at no matter how busy a crossing, is never too 
busy to answer questions. 

The cathedral is one of exceeding beauty, although 
its original Norman characteristics were largely al- 
tered some centuries ago to another style of archi- 



80 FOUR ON A TOUR 

tecture, and on top of this came a great deal of 
fussing in the past centuries in the way of those al- 
terations that are mistakenly called restorations. In- 
stead of being a Norman cathedral, as it should be, 
it is really of the Perpendicular style — a style which 
makers of English guide-books who are destitute of 
humor love to abbreviate to " Perp." Most of 
Gloucester Cathedral is still so fine and imposing as 
to show how difficult it is to spoil entirely the superb 
creations of the early architects. And even yet much 
of the interior of the cathedral is strictly Norman; 
and it may be added that there is an ancient chill 
within the building which has certainly come down 
from Norman days. 

When you come, in this cathedral, to the tomb of 
the eldest son of the Conqueror, the entire past comes 
back with vividness and you feel as if this is all that 
is needed to give a final touch of verisimilitude. 

One of the windows of this cathedral, the great 
east window, is among the glories of England, for 
it is the largest stained-glass window in the country 
and among the few largest of the world. You are 
told with an amusing earnestness — everything is 
earnest in Gloucester — that, whereas York Minster's 
greatest window contains 2,574 square feet of glass, 
this window contains 2,736 square feet; but one need 
not at all concern himself with such detail, for its 
grandeur, immensity and general effectiveness are 
what are important; and it brings closely back to us 
the great days of the past when we realize that this 
was a memorial window to the Battle of Crecy and 
that of the many armorial shields inserted beside it 
quite a number of these identical shields still remain- 
ing were put in by the very survivors of the battle. 

When we went into the cathedral the choir were 
singing, somewhere out of sight, and the organ was 
softly playing, and all was sweetly and gently im- 




NE OF THE MANY CLTPPED GARDENS THAT WE PASSED 




Quaint roadside cottages in the Severn valley 



BY TEWKESBURY 81 

pressive; and then the impression was added to by 
a long line of surpliced men and choir-boys slowly 
filing out. 

Then we went into the cloisters ; and such cloisters ! 
— for they are marvelously and extravagantly beau- 
tiful in their carving of stone, their roof of stone 
lace, their exquisite fan tracery and in the wonderful 
beauty of it all even to the smallest detail; and with 
the beauty there is at the same time a fine nobility 
and dignity. And all this is such a tremendous con- 
trast to the plain and severe interior of the cathedral 
itself. 

We wandered about for quite a while, alone, in 
these cloisters, for such a place is not one for leav- 
ing hurriedly, and the soft sound of the cathedral 
chimes came like music in a romantic dream. And 
then a door opened and a dean came walking through, 
with black gaiters buttoned tight from knee to foot, 
and with black coat with queer up-standing collar, 
and with white collar buttoned at the back, and with 
a strange-structured hat, which he put on as he 
emerged from the church into the cloisters. A very 
solemn figure he; no one could really be half so sol- 
emn as he looked as he paced along in the slowest of 
slow dignity. Then the door from the church opened 
again and there came bursting out a bevy of wrig- 
gling, giggling, nudging, whispering choir-boys. 
But all their wriggling never carried even the boldest 
of them within twenty feet of that dean ! He had an 
aura, that man! And then the preposterous dean 
vanished and the boys vanished and we were alone 
again and the chimes continued, more sweet and calm 
and restful than before. 

We did not go about in the city of Gloucester to 
any extent; we saw it well enough as we rode along 
its well-paved streets in necessarily passing through 
the place, and as a city it gave a pleasant effect, but 



82 FOUR ON A TOUR 

not one specially to be remembered. Among the 
spots held in particular remembrance by the towns- 
folk is the church where Whitefield preached, and this 
reminded us that Americans should not slight their 
own places of interest, for within a mile of our own 
home is an unmarked place where Whitefield 
preached. 

From Gloucester we turned our car toward a 
region that had long fascinated us, the region of 
Tintern Abbey and the Wye. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 

WE came to the forest of Dean, one of the 
great royal forests of the past, but now 
rather more a forest in name than in fact, 
although there are still great areas of it in a wood- 
land landscape of beeches and oaks ; but though there 
are some monarchs among the trees (as befits a royal 
forest!) most are mere saplings, for the forest has 
been severely used. The forest is to a great extent 
now a mining district, and the only villages are min- 
ing villages, and yet, although there are only poor 
little houses, we found greenery and not desolation 
and for much of the distance there was a wide space 
of green turf, with sheep freely grazing upon it, be- 
tween the road and the forest. 

The villages are few and there are few scattered 
houses and we are entirely away from the region of 
great private estates, but the road is marvelously 
well made and well kept ; and then we catch sight of 
a cute baby donkey beside its mother, a little thing 
three feet high not counting the ears, which extended 
upward for a foot or so more; and the horn was 
honked suddenly, whereat the little donkey kicked 
and jumped in hilarious excitement while its mother 
looked on quite placid, pleased and proud; and a 
solemn old countryman who was passing dropped the 
solemnity from his visage and laughed until we could 
see far down his throat, and it was like looking down 
into a great red hole surrounded by yellow ivory. 
Going through this rather prosaic forest was an- 

83 



84 FOUR ON A TOUR 

other example of the satisfaction that comes from mo- 
toring, for to go through such a region slowly would 
be rather tiresome, whereas to go rapidly through it 
in a motor car, with swift and constant change of 
scene, and with every moment coming upon some- 
thing new, made the journey, although not nearly so 
interesting as through most parts of England, a pleas- 
urable experience. 

We left the forest and entered another fine and 
pleasant region, and finally motored down and down 
a tremendously long and easy road, with curve after 
curve constantly opening upon new attractiveness, 
and came into Monmouth, a town nestled in a hol- 
low among hills and itself standing on a slightly- 
rising bit of lower-rising ground along the river Wye. 
We entered through narrow, twisty streets, and 
emerged upon a little open space which bears the 
proud name of Agincourt Square; and naturally 
enough, for it was here in Monmouth that Henry the 
Fifth, who won the famous Battle of Agincourt, was 
born. 

An inclosed old-time coach-yard answered for the 
garage, and from this we entered the old hotel — so 
many of the hotels are old over here! — through a 
stone-paved, stone-arched entrance passage beside a 
gloomy room in which were dimly-gleaming copper 
pans and those silver domes that the English people 
so love to put over serving dishes that they are likely 
to put a very big one over a very small egg. There 
was just light enough to see that there was not a 
modern utensil in the kitchen; and the range itself 
was almost as primitive as an open fireplace, and the 
pots were right upon the coals, and the kitchen alto- 
gether seemed to be almost as primitive as those of 
the monks of the Middle Ages; one is often forced 
to wonder why the keeping of the old is allowed to 
mean the keeping also of the inconveniences and 




The window of Geoffrey of Monmouth 




Red-coated soldiers going to church at Monmouth 




Tintern Abbey 




The roadside inn at Alveston 



THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 85 

shortcomings of the old. Most Americans love the 
old, but they want facilities and conveniences also, 
whereas most of the people of England do not love 
the old, yet hold obstinately to all its inconveniences. 
We saw here, as in other inns in England, the ex- 
planation of the length of time so generally required 
to serve meals, for here a maid would necessarily 
have a long walk with every trayful. Finding the 
kitchen old-fashioned, we naturally found the rest of 
the place equally old-fashioned, and it was rich in 
stone pavements and unexpected corners. 

It had been the intention to wire this evening to 
the railway station at the end of Severn Tunnel to 
arrange for passing through with the car late the 
next afternoon. The Severn rapidly widens into a 
long and broad bay, and the tunnel makes a short cut, 
if one wishes to cross to Bristol. The expense is not 
very much, but, with European love of detail, it va- 
ries very much according to the kind of the car and 
how it is shipped and whether it is insured; all the 
gasoline, or petrol as it is universally known in Eng- 
land, is drawn out and the motor is placed upon a flat 
car for the tunnel journey, and the owner of the car 
is given a slip showing precisely how much has been 
taken out, and at the other end of the tunnel pre- 
cisely the same amount is put back, free of charge. 
But we missed this tunnel experience from the absurd 
fact that after dinner there was absolutely no way 
to telegraph; the government-owned system having 
shut down about six or seven o'clock, not to reopen 
that evening and to give only a brief hour the next 
day, Sunday. And Sunday would not do, for the 
tunnel will not take a car unless notification is given 
on at least one day previous to the passage, and Sun- 
day was to be our day for crossing. We had planned 
a trip going down one side of the bay and then cross- 
ing by tunnel, but by our enforced new plan we had 



86 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



a vastly pleasanter experience than going through a 
smoky tunnel and we avoided all the risk of the un- 
usual in tunnel transit — had we lost the car, of course 
the insurance would have repaid us a certain sum, but 
it could not have recompensed us for the break- 
ing up of arrangements and the stoppage of the 
journey. 

As it was, we had an exceedingly beautiful ride 
back to the head of the bay and thence along the 
other side; and it did give us an idea of government 
ownership to find that even if one's necessity were 
very great it would be impossible to send a telegram 
in the evening in a town the size of Monmouth. 

It was Saturday evening and the streets were 
thronged with a Saturday-evening crowd, and dark- 
ness did not decrease the number, and a humming 
chir of sound came up to the hotel windows. Then 
suddenly there fell a silence, and there came a 
woman's voice, of exceeding depth and softness, that 
rose and fell in solemn singing cadences. It was all 
perhaps quite commonplace enough; it was only a 
Salvation Army girl; but it was thrilling, and not 
only impressed us, but it absolutely silenced and 
stilled the hundreds of people who had been walking 
up and down, laughing and talking. The voice 
ceased, and there followed a very Boanerges of a 
preacher, whose tremendous voice was of so little 
impressiveness that it was almost instantly drowned 
by a recurrence of the noises of the all-at-once- 
indifferent crowd. 

The morning was as quiet as an English Sunday 
morning can be, and through the silence there came 
now and then the vague sound of choir-boys singing, 
and there softly came the lovely chiming of the 
ancient church bells ; and there seemed to be an added 
loveliness of sound when we realized that we were 
listening to the very chimes brought from Calais, in 



THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 87 

the long, long ago by Henry the Fifth, Shakespeare's 
Prince Hal. 

We motored quietly about, and first went down to 
a picturesque bridge of old red-stone arches across 
the Monnow, which here flows into the Wye, and we 
drove through a highly pictorial ancient gateway, 
with curious angles and curves, in the center of the 
bridge. 

Thence we motored back to a higher part of the 
town into a road from where we looked across level 
meadows in the foreground of a very lovely view, 
and on the other side of the road stood an old build- 
ing that had in its second story an oriel, mullioned 
stone window of remarkable distinction and beauty, 
and it pleased us to learn that this was called the 
window of Geoffrey of Monmouth, for he is so de- 
lightfully kept in memory by his chronicles that it 
was good to know that his memory is also kept in 
mind by such a window; and ever afterwards, when- 
ever we come across his name or his writings, we shall 
be sure to form a picture of him sitting at work at 
this window overlooking the river and the meadows. 

Just around the corner is the ancient church of 
the town ; a church which is indeed unusually ancient, 
but which does not look so, for it has been so altered 
and restored as to suggest nothing of the decrepitude 
or ruin of ancient architecture, and it is delightfully 
usable after all these centuries. Beside it is an old- 
time churchyard house, bowered in jessamine and 
roses, and all about are flowered paths and pleasant 
shade, and all looks quite pleasant and attractive. 

Up a narrow street toward the church came the 
beat of drum and blare of trumpets, and it was six 
hundred soldiers from the garrison being led quick- 
steppingly to church, and as they came in sight they 
were a blaze, a very conflagration, of scarlet, led 
by their scarlet band. 



88 FOUR ON A TOUR 

The bandsmen laid the drums on flat gravestones 
beside the church entrance ; and they observed the in- 
junction to watch and pray by going inside to pray 
and leaving just a sentry outside to watch the boys 
of the town; and one small boy came and stood en- 
tranced beside the big drum and almost touched its 
two sticks, laid cross- wise, and beat it softly in imagi- 
nation, his hands making the motions, while the sentry 
looked tolerantly on; perhaps we were looking at a 
prospective Drum of the Fore and Aft. 

Immediately after the arrival of the soldiers there 
came up from the opposite direction two officers, in 
a particularly resplendent motor car painted in yel- 
low and black, with the chauffeur a soldier in uni- 
form. The officers got out and stood stiffly waiting 
while the soldier took up their swords, which had 
been unbelted and laid alongside of the emergency 
brake, and put them in their scabbards, and the offi- 
cers meanwhile so held their arms out of the way 
as to look like women at the dressmaker's. And 
the whole effect was as that of a nurse with children ; 
you expected to see the chauffeur fasten a last stray 
button and straighten their hair and kiss them 
good-by and send them into church. They went in; 
and in a little while we heard the six hundred voices 
joining tremendously in " God Save the King! " 

When, in motoring farther about the town, we 
went past the barracks, we noticed within an in- 
closure a building of the style of Louis the Four- 
teenth, which seemed such an unusual thing to see 
in such a town that the sentry was asked to tell us 
about it. 

" Oh, that is the officers' quarters," he said ; and he 
continued, without any prompting or questioning and 
with an amusingly deprecatory realization that 
Americans love to see the old: " It's only new, sir! 
You can see the date upon it, 1687." And how such 



THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 89 

a building came to be built there in the long ago 
was thus to remain a matter for curious speculation. 

We left Monmouth in its Sunday peacef ulness and 
motored off down a sweetly felicitous valley and 
faintly the sounds of the ancient chimes came to us 
again and one of us softly quoted, " Solemn, yet 
sweet, the church bells' chime floats through the 
woods at noon " — for it was noon as we left Mon- 
mouth and started down the valley of the Wye to- 
ward Tintern Abbey. 

It was a beautiful drive, and we felt that we were 
again in Wales ; for all of this used to be Wales and 
was only arbitrarily made a part of England. 

There were enormous hedges and great growths 
of ivy that lay thick carpeted under the trees or clam- 
bered over the high walls that alternated with the 
hedges, and there were endless lines of avenued firs 
greened to their very bases, and from time to time 
there were glimpses of the river shimmering through 
the trees or curving around delightful bends. We 
finally drifted down a long avenue beneath arching 
beech and birch trees, the most charming road that 
we had thus far seen, and came to Tintern Abbey. 

Tintern Abbey, with its associated monkish build- 
ings, is now but a cluster of roofless ruins, with a 
tremendous profusion of jacks and braces arranged 
in the interior in a desperate effort to prevent further 
falling, for so much has already tumbled or crumbled 
and disappeared. 

The ruins are nooked in a bend of the ever-bend- 
ing Wye, with hills, thick-wooded to their summits, 
rising all around ; Tintern is in the center of a green- 
hilled amphitheater. The beautifully pillared in- 
terior, the great lovely window-tracery of stone — 
everywhere there is charm. And when, realizing the 
extreme beauty of it all, we remember that this was 
a monastery of the Cistercians, it seems very curious 



90 FOUR ON A TOUR 

indeed, for their rules as to simplicity were very strict ; 
there were to be no stone arches on their buildings, 
there was to be no colored glass in their windows 
(glass of any sort long disappeared from this ruin 
of Tintern), they were to have no sculpture or pic- 
tures, there were to be no chimes and only one bell 
should be struck at one time, their altars were to 
have only one candlestick and this was to be of iron — 
with such rules, and more of the same character, one 
would expect to find an extreme degree of severity 
in any Cistercian building, but Tintern Abbey is a 
fine example of what artistic instinct could achieve 
even when restrained. Restraint is one of the chief 
distinctions of Tintern and with that restraint are 
breadth of design and nobility of proportion. 

There is music in the very name of Tintern Abbey. 
" What's in a name? " was long ago asked; but there 
is often a great deal in a name, for one that is musical 
to such a degree as this certainly gives an added sense 
of beauty and interest. 

The name of Tintern Abbey is familiar to a great 
number of people, with the sense of its being a place 
of unusual interest, because Wordsworth wrote some 
lines and put in their title that they were written near 
Tintern Abbey; and although, as a matter of fact, 
the lines have no reference to Tintern and Tintern 
was not even mentioned in them, the fact that the 
famous Wordsworth used the name in his title helped 
materially to make the abbey famous ; its name is far 
more famous, for this reason, than is the still more 
beautiful Fountains Abbey, which we were later to 
see, for Fountains has never had any great novelist 
or poet put it into literature. 

We had tea in the shadow of Tintern, at a little 
inn incongruously named The Anchor, a delightful 
little inn in the midst of a garden rich with gloire de 
Dijons and with wonderful violas that have as many 



THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 91 

as sixty blossoms on a single plant. It was a most at- 
tractive experience, for we sat at a little table in the 
garden, and a maid who was as pretty as English 
maids can sometimes be, had a voice that, when she 
even said such a small thing as, " You shall have it," 
was softly agreeable and somehow suggestive of the 
English plays that have lately been coming to Amer- 
ica; and the whole thing seemed almost as unreal as 
a stage setting, with the beautiful ruin beside us and 
the flowers all around and mine host cutting bunches 
of roses for us and pointing out his strawberry beds 
and a monster ruin of an oak traditionally going back 
to the days of the monks themselves. Thus delightful 
may be the taking of tea in England. 

We left Tintern by an easily-rising road, giving 
view after view of sheer loveliness, and under one of 
those avenues which we have come to know as typi- 
cal of England, with trees beautifully arching their 
branches over our heads; and this time the trees are 
elms, such being the agreeable variety of these noble 
avenues. 

England has very few trees according to forestry 
reports, in comparison with the trees of other lands, 
and we presume that these reports are correct, yet 
how delightfully such trees as the country has are 
placed just where they are most attractive and beau- 
tiful! Thus far we have assuredly noticed no short- 
age of trees in England and nothing could be more 
attractive than the way they are alternated with the 
stretches of open green. 

The day was a day of uncertain glory, with part 
sun, part cloud, part dashes of rain which now and 
then gave a pleasant dampness but not enough to put 
up the top of the car. 

At the mouth of the Wye we came to Chepstow, 
with its stately old castle splendidly rising on the 
edge of a cliff beside the river. Chepstow is another 



92 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of the long list of English overlooked towns, and 
though not so full of interest as some, it is an exceed- 
ingly attractive old place, with its many Lombardy 
poplars and with the entire town giving an impres- 
sion of being bowered among fine roses. 

We remember the place in particular, such being 
the arbitrariness of travelers' impressions, by the fact 
that there were two small boys standing in perfect 
quiet at one side of the road as we entered the town, 
when suddenly, moved by some ever-to-be-unguess- 
able impulse, the elder, a boy of six, threw down 
his little fat brother of four and madly dragged him 
across the road immediately in front of the car. 
Well, nothing happened; but it was one of the many 
arguments for always being sure that your brakes 
are in good working condition, for there are so many 
little fat toddlers in England; the cottages are full 
of them and one can never know just when he is go- 
ing to see them in front of the car instead of in front 
of the cottage. 

The castle, looking as imposing and interesting as 
it does, ought really to have richness of association, 
but it really does not have, as its most interesting 
memory is that for twenty years one of the Regicides 
was imprisoned there, and the little cell in which he 
died is still shown. Americans have a general im- 
pression that all of the Regicides were killed by 
Charles the Second and this is largely because of the 
relentless pursuit in America of two who escaped 
there and helped to add a picturesqueness to the 
stories of early American days, as, of the story of 
Hadley church; but in reality the lives of quite a 
number of the Regicides were spared, thus forming 
an illustration of what English historians call " un- 
exampled lenity," — it being lenity to let them wear 
away their lives in narrow stone and iron quarters! 

Chepstow marked the farthest point of our advance 



THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 93 

in this direction, and from here we turned northward 
along the bank of the Severn estuary, to reach a 
crossing place. We came to Lydney, in the center 
of which we saw a really splendid ancient town-cross 
of the fourteenth century, with eight long steps lead- 
ing up on each of the four sides to a stone cross in 
the middle. Ancient crosses have disappeared from 
the market-places and squares of so many of the 
English towns that it is a pleasure to come across 
those that exist and we found this to be a region in 
which quite a number of the towns still possess these 
interesting memorials of the past. 

And we found, too, even along the Severn's side, 
that England is not a level country but as a matter 
of fact is quite hilly. 

At Lydney there is a ferry over which one may 
cross to the other side, but it is a ferry only to be 
used on week-days, and so we went farther on our 
way until we came to little Newnham, where there is 
also a ferry, and this ferry runs on Sundays as well 
as on week-days and, as we were to find, by night as 
well as by day. 

On looking for the ferry and the ferryman, a griz- 
zled, slow of speech, slow-voiced, hairy-faced sailor 
was found, and he was quite willing to cross but said 
that he could not do so until high tide. 

" And when will that be? '* 

" At one in the morning," he answered, gravely 
matter-of-fact. We pictured ourselves waiting until 
that hour from five in the afternoon! It had not 
occurred to the ferryman that, if he was willing to 
take us over at one in the morning there could be any 
objection to waiting, on the part of his would-be pas- 
sengers ; but it now slowly dawned upon him that one 
o'clock in the morning might possibly be inconvenient 
and so he added, in his grave and matter-of-fact way, 
" Or at one o'clock to-morrow afternoon." 



94 FOUR ON A TOUR 

And he pointed out the boat. We had been told 
that there were primitive boats like those of the early 
Britons still used on the Severn, and in a general 
way we had been on the lookout for them, and now 
we saw the boat which apparently had given rise to 
the story, for the ferryboat, although not, indeed, so 
early as the British coracle, long antedated these pres- 
ent years and was an old-fashioned keel rowboat upon 
which it seemed absolutely impossible to carry a 
motor car. 

" I lay long planks across that boat to hold the 
car," said the ferryman. And we pictured ourselves 
out in mid-stream in the middle of the night on the 
teetering planks; surely nothing could seem more 
hazardous, and it did not seem possible that the man 
meant anything but a joke; but, curious to know his 
ideas more fully, we asked, " How long a passage 
would it be? " 

He drawled, " Well, maybe an hour," and added, 
under impulse of truthfulness, that his last passage 
had taken him four hours. We wondered why that 
motorist could have been so desperately eager to 
cross, especially when, after all, it was only a dozen 
miles from this point on to Gloucester by a pleasant 
road. 

At any rate, there was no temptation to wait for 
hours even had the ferryboat been safe, and so we 
ran on to Gloucester, passed once more through the 
center of that earnest city, and turned down the 
other side of the Severn on the road to Bristol. The 
road was pleasant with pleasant homes, but we passed 
one tragic little village beside the great estate of the 
lord of the manor, and there was a large brimming 
pond just inside of the stone wall, and the great brick 
entrance-post was topped with huge pineapples, and 
there was a long stone-edged ornamental sort of canal 
much like a Versailles waterway on a small scale, and 



THE VALLEY OF THE WYE 95 

it had an edge of molded stone and its water was right 
at the level of the grass, with rhododendrons and 
other lovely growths, and a peacock strutting about. 
The contrast between these manor grounds and the 
forlorn village was very great; the "lord of the 
manor " means a great deal in England, and the very 
village itself is often owned in entirety by the aristo- 
crat who lives adjacent. 

It came on to rain, and quite hard enough for us 
to use the car-top for a little while — the first time 
thus far — and one of the very few times that we had 
the top up in the course of the entire tour; we may 
add that never in the entire tour did we even get out 
the side-curtains, for the rain in England is seldom 
a hard downpour and never a deluge, but the drops 
seem leisurely to seep through the atmosphere. 
Probably no country but England ever counts rain 
as in itself a pleasurable incident; and its most fa- 
mous fisherman expressed quaintly that he gave 
thanks to " Him that made sun and us, and still pro- 
tects us, and gives us flowers, and showers, and con- 
tent and leisure to go a-fishing." Well, we were not 
going a-fishing but we were going a-motoring and 
we could practically see how the English country 
folk regard rain, for we not only remembered that 
Walton speaks of waiting under a honeysuckle hedge 
or a sycamore when it showered a little harder than 
ordinary, but here on this road below Bristol we 
noticed numerous people waiting patiently under 
thick-leafed trees in perfect dryness and in the calm 
certainty that the rain would stop before it had time 
to soak through the leaves. And so it did stop; it 
just came down in drops for a while, without driving 
or coming on a slant, and then the sun was out again. 
But the storm clouds remained beautifully massed 
on the other side of the Severn, and there were superb, 
wide-sweeping views through the rain-washed air and 



96 FOUR ON A TOUR 

across the great river to the distant hills, black or of 
deep violet-blue, and to horizon lines of pale buff in 
the setting sun — a sort of American Revolution effect 
in buff and blue. 

From Monmouth to Chepstow and back to Glouces- 
ter we had measured forty-seven miles for the day, 
and now we were approaching seventy; not a long 
run, but we had realized that it was getting dark and 
were aiming to go on until we reached an inn of which 
we had heard, some score of miles below Gloucester; 
and a man of whom, in the gathering gloom, we 
asked the road directions, said, after giving them: 

" Where are you from? " 

" We came from America," was the reply. 

" In a motor car ! Good Lord!" And as we went 
on we heard his voice still trailing on in the darkness, 
"G-o-o-dL-o-r-d!" 






CHAPTER X 

THE WATERY CITIES OF BATH AND WELLS 

WE reached the inn and found it an old one. 
Very generally the small inns throughout 
England are old, and have thereby more 
attractiveness than they would have if new, for old 
inns seem somehow to give the idea of offering the 
gathered hospitality of many generations. This par- 
ticular inn was the Ship Inn and the very name 
shows that it must have been established by some re- 
tired old sailor. The room in which we ate was up 
half a flight of stairs and was a tidy, compact little 
ship's cabin; and a fire burned in the little fireplace, 
for although this was the last day of May the even- 
ing was very cool ; and a round table was attractively 
set, and Dickens prints, in scarlet and black and 
white, were arranged around the grass-green walls, 
and there was clear, sheer muslin at the windows, 
tied in the middle of each window with green, and 
curtains of bright blue were drawn for the night; 
and " the lydies send me flowers for the table," said 
the hostess. The room presented a peculiarly bold 
and extremely effective type of decoration and we 
were surprised to find it in this little wayside place. 
Little stairs ran queerly in every direction and an 
old hayloft had been turned into a charming ball- 
room, reached by a glass-inclosed stone stair, and 
we were to find in the morning that there was a little 
garden in which to eat strawberries and cream (and 
it was really cream), and there was a little box- 
bordered green lawn that had been made by lifting 

97 



98 FOUR ON A TOUR 

the sod from the old field beside the house, and there 
were roses clustered along the high stone wall which 
shut out the road. The inn stood right on the main 
road, and it and its every outbuilding were painted 
white with brilliant green trimmings, and all of the 
window-sills of the inn were agleam with flowers. 

At this inn we made our first acquaintance with 
the pinafore for grown persons, for the woman who 
waited upon us wore an unbelted pinafore of white, 
reaching from her shoulders to her feet, a garment 
very general in rural England, as we found. 

This inn, so it appeared, was owned by a trust. A 
principal business ' of England is innkeeping ; and 
bicycles, motorcycles and motor cars have given re- 
newed importance to the inns of the countryside; 
wherefore the capitalization of the innkeeping in- 
dustry has been a natural development, and on the 
whole probably an excellent one. The passing of 
the old-time innkeeper is at hand, and an effort is 
being made to preserve the charm of the old-time 
inns while putting them in charge of a new kind of 
innkeeper. There are several companies that operate 
a number of hotels and inns throughout the country ; 
the general method being to secure long-established 
inns, send down decorations and picturesquely suit- 
able furniture from London, put in plumbing, select 
a good type of manager, and preserve as much as 
possible the old-time atmosphere with modern con- 
veniences. One of these hotel trusts is headed by 
five lord lieutenants of counties with whom are asso- 
ciated, according to the prospectus, a few earls and 
a scattering of admirals, and they give their hotel 
managers not only a salary but a commission on the 
total receipts exclusive of those for drink. The old- 
time inns, no matter how attractive they may be, have 
based their importance mainly upon the receipts of 
the taproom; but the new type, although not doing 



THE WATERY CITIES 99 

away with the taproom, tends rather to discourage 
and minimize it; at such inns coffee is served as a 
matter of course after dinner, and it is possible to 
get a drink of water without turning the house upside 
down. At the ordinary old-time inn, water and 
coffee are almost ungettable luxuries. 

It may be added, so that one need not attach too 
much importance to mere titles, that the great folk 
of England let their names be used for advertising 
purposes with astonishing readiness, and that al- 
though England pretends to scorn money-making, 
the English people of title are seldom averse to earn- 
ing a few pounds by letting their names be used to 
add supposed distinction to business enterprise. In 
this particular case, however, it seems to be an excel- 
lent thing. 

The tide rises high in Bristol Channel and as we 
approached that city, after our night at the Ship Inn, 
we saw great bare stretches, for it was then low tide, 
and there were stout little steamboats stranded in the 
mud. Bristol itself is a large and interesting city 
and possesses a beautiful cathedral in which beautiful 
music was going on as we entered; but it occurred 
to us that too much importance need not be attached, 
from any but an esthetic standpoint, to gentle music 
heard in the twilight of an old cathedral, for music 
just as fine and quiet as this sounded here when 
Bristol was the center of the slave trade of the world. 

In an unexpected position out in front of the 
cathedral is a splendid Norman arch, preserved with 
remarkable detail, and the public way goes under it 
and there is a smaller arch beside it, and the two to- 
gether are irresistibly remindful of Mrs. Washing- 
ton's large hole for the cat and the smaller one for 
the kittens. From a distance Bristol gives the effect 
as of an entire city with red-tiled roofs, and the place 
is so built close around its harbor that big ships may 



100 FOUR ON A TOUR 

sail up into the very heart of the city. And they 
still have in Bristol the cigar-store Indian who long 
ago vanished to the happy hunting grounds from 
America; for over here one finds him still preserved, 
only, although an Indian with a tomahawk, he is 
labeled " Demarara negro " ! 

Quite away from the center of the city is the church 
of St. Mary Redcliffe which, although smaller and 
less elaborate than the cathedral, manages to give 
the impression of being more distinguished ; and after 
coming to such a conclusion it is naturally pleasant 
to have one's judgment royally confirmed by being 
told that Queen Elizabeth said of this church that it 
was the finest parish church in England. And up 
above the porch you are shown the old muniment 
room, in which Chatterton reveled in ancient records 
and dreamed the poetic dreams that made him memo- 
rable. 

But the American thinks this church especially in- 
teresting because here the father of William Penn is 
buried. His armor still hangs high on the church 
wall, with a lengthy inscription beneath it giving title 
after title that he had won, for he was a great com- 
mander of the English fleet, and ending quaintly: 
" & with a Gentle & Even Gale In much Peace arived 
and Ancord In his Last and Best Port." One does 
not wonder that Admiral William Penn looms very 
much higher in the English mind than does his son 
William, who merely founded a great commonwealth. 

We found the church still thickly strewn with green 
rushes and sweet as with the smell of new-mown hay, 
for this was the day following Whit Sunday, and 
on every Whit Sunday for many centuries past this 
church is thus strewn and the mayor and his alder- 
men come here in state. Things like this make for 
the fascination of England, and as you walk over the 
rushes that have been strewn over the ancient stone 




The deserted arcades of Bath 







'' 



A Bath chair in one of the curving circuses 







u 



The charabancs at Bristol 





jb r 



* % 



09fci 

V!" HI 



I fUW 




I 



The squarish facade of Wells 



THE WATERY CITIES 101 

floor in carrying out an ancient custom, you seem to 
hear in the soft rustle the awakening of the centuries ; 
and when the organ softly plays you realize that, in 
an English church, someone always seems to be play- 
ing the organ just when you wish an effect to com- 
plete some impression. 

Bristol streets were full of a Whit Monday crowd 
and it was interesting to see the people thronging by 
the ancient " nails " ; round metal tables looking like 
capstans, and still standing, as they have for centuries, 
right out at the curb-line in the heart of the business 
center; for these tables used to be used in the actual 
paying-over of money and gave rise to the expression 
of " paying on the nail." 

The people everywhere showed a persistent desire 
to be run down, but we managed with some difficulty 
not to oblige them and got away for a run of a dozen 
agreeable miles to Bath, a little city peculiarly full of 
associations of the famous folk of England, for it 
was long the most fashionable of resorts and its 
waters not only attracted people there but also drew 
writers to describe the place and its life. 

The Bath bun is still there, but it is another idol 
fallen, for although it is edible it is only a rather 
ordinary, doughy, eggy, yeasty, curranty sort of 
thing; and the Bath chair is still there, but it is only 
an amusing baby-carriage for the old, pushed by a 
man — it is really what the English call a " pram " — 
and the old-time pronunciation of the city's name is 
still there, Bath being pronounced in a long-drawn- 
out way with the " a " impossibly broad. And every- 
where in Bath there are fascinating memories of the 
celebrities of the past. 

The famous pump-room is preserved and used, and 
from the description of Dickens you would think it 
a " spacious saloon, ornamented with Corinthian pil- 
lars, and a music gallery," but in reality it is neither 



102 FOUR ON A TOUR 

large nor beautiful and its walls are of stucco, cov- 
ered with a cream-colored paint. The bar with " the 
marble vase at which the pumper gets the water and 
the yellow-looking tumblers out of which the visitors 
get it " are still there, and for a drink of the water 
you pay two-pence but would gladly pay a great deal 
more than two shillings to be rid of the nauseating 
taste of the lukewarm stuff, which tastes like very 
bad bath-water, indeed, and that it could ever have 
been fashionable shows to what lengths fashion can 
make people go. For example, the good Mr. Pick- 
wick, who was never ill in his life, went there and 
regularly, " drank a quarter of a pint before break- 
fast, and then walked up a hill ; and another quarter 
of a pint after breakfast, and then walked down a 
hill." 

Underneath a great part of the city are astonishing 
Roman remains, for those particularly sturdy old- 
timers built great baths there, which have been largely 
excavated in modern times; and it was a curious 
bringing together of the ancient and the modern days 
to notice that right over the Roman remains were a 
group of Whit Monday holiday-makers tangoing to 
a street piano's music. The dancing was vulgarly 
done and a policeman, with an air of detached aloof- 
ness, pushed his way through the giggling crowd and, 
seeming not to see the dancers, tapped the music- 
maker on the shoulder. " That's enough, my man," 
he said curtly, and the music stopped and the crowd 
melted and the policeman went slowly away with 
his fine air of detachment and aloofness. He had 
managed it admirably — and an English holiday crowd 
is not very nice to manage. 

In the very center of the city still stand the build- 
ings and the pillared colonnades of the time of Beau 
Nash and his followers, and they are highly pictorial 
and very effective, and nothing could more strangely 



THE WATERY CITIES 103 

mark the difference between the Bath of the past and 
of the present, than that in the old-time days of Bath 
these arcades were always thronged, whereas when 
we saw the place there was literally not a soul to be 
seen there, although within a stone's-throw were the 
great jostling crowds of people out seeking amuse- 
ment. 

We motored about a little in Bath through the 
residential streets, because of their being so full of 
associations, and we found them very charming 
streets indeed, of wonderfully uniform design in the 
classic- worshiping taste of the eighteenth century; 
and among the streets are great curved spaces called 
" circuses," also lined with houses in classic taste, and 
the circus in which Lord Clive and other celebrities had 
their homes has thirty-six houses to a quadrant, with 
classic pillars fronting the buildings, which are three 
stories in height, with deep moat-like basements be- 
tween the houses and the sidewalk. It was curious 
to notice that, for these houses, instead of the classic 
pineapple ornamentation which the designer had in- 
tended, the English builders had managed to make 
representations of English acorns. 

We went out of Bath up an interminably long hill, 
realizing again what a mistake it is to think of Eng- 
land as a level country, and from the summit we 
found a widespread but rather featureless view. 
Then, having reached the top of the hill, we went 
down and down a long descent — what the English 
call a stiffish bit — noticing, as we passed, some typical 
trampers of the British countryside, a man and 
woman in the shade of a hedge. Over and over 
again we have noticed in England, not only that the 
country is tramp-infested but that the ancient dictum 
that " it is not good that the man should be alone " is 
taken by the tramps with personal application. And 
here is a curious thing; the trampers in England are 



104 FOUR ON A TOUR 

English, whereas the tramps of America are seldom 
American. 

We are on our way to another old-time watering- 
place, this next one with the watery name of Wells, 
and the road, although very hilly, is less picturesque 
than we have for some miles been having. The little 
newish houses are built tight together and each has a 
little stone-walled garden in front; at one, tea is 
offered with a phonograph for attraction; at another 
we noticed a woman in a mutch; we passed a great 
load of long logs drawn by four horses tandem; we 
passed a gypsy caravan of seven wagons; we passed 
a woods of so deep a black that even in the glow of 
the sun we could scarcely see into it ; and thus we got 
to Wells. 

The cathedral of Wells is dignified and beautiful, 
with great open spaces in front of it, and is easily 
remembered by its squarish facade, which looks out 
across a great open space which adds much to the gen- 
eral impressiveness. The interior gives a curiously 
white impression as if all the stone had recently been 
scrubbed clean, and in its center is an aggressive in- 
verted arch effect which is not attractive, these in- 
verted arches, with criss-cross curves, having been put 
up only five or six centuries ago, as a bracing for the 
central tower, and they give an air as of a sort of 
modern improvement. 

Remembering that we were not to spend too much 
time with the minor cathedrals, we did not stay long 
at Wells: quite a number of visitors were there, it 
being a holiday, and every single one spent most 
of his time in front of a wonderful old clock which 
has a half-dozen or more little knights on horseback 
that go galloping madly round and round and in and 
out as it strikes; but no matter how wonderfully 
made, it is only a medieval plaything, after all, and 
seems to be out of place in a building of such dignity. 






THE WATERY CITIES 105 

The little knights have been galloping in just that 
way for centuries, and no doubt the pilgrims to the 
cathedral have for centuries spent their time watching 
the evolutions or waiting for them to begin. We 
looked too! 

If one were to make a gastronomic map of Eng- 
land one would follow the Bath bun country with the 
country of Cheddar cheese; and of course we ate the 
cheese, and in this found nothing of disappointment. 

It is a run of only five miles from Wells to Glaston- 
bury, so thick crowded are the places of interest in 
England. At times one almost believes that he can 
scarcely motor for the sights, for they do demand so 
much attention ! Glastonbury is one of the unusually 
famous names, because it was for so many centuries 
one of the greatest points of religious pilgrimage, 
but there are now at the place only scattered ruins. 
It may fairly be said that Glastonbury is a poor little 
town living upon its ruins. It is peculiarly a place of 
old mullioned-windowed ancient houses, used for 
shops and inns. 

Our attention was attracted, as we motored into 
the town, by what seemed to us the rather odd signs 
of " Bespoke Tailor," " Photographic Chemist," 
"Bespoke Shoes," "Jobmaster," "Tea Experts"; 
and the local name for their own upper town is 
" Bove Hill," with not a thought or need of an 
apostrophe. 

We spent the night at an ancient pilgrim inn which 
was built before the time when Columbus made his 
voyage of discovery; — always, in England, we keep 
coming upon such marvelous things as this — and we 
found it a very comfortable inn indeed. 

Nothing opens early in England, but Glastonbury 
is even slower than the slowest, and it is impossible 
to get anything before 9.30 in the morning. We 
wanted not only to buy some things but of course 



106 FOUR OX A TOUR 

to see the famous abbey ruins, but as the ruins were 
not open we could only wander through an ecclesias- 
tical gate and a tidy passage till we came to a row 
of cottages, each with a tiny garden of mingled pota- 
toes, roses and fox-gloves, and to a little chapel of 
the old abbey, with some villagers eating their break- 
fast and ha-ha-ing inside of it, and from this vantage 
point we had a good look at the ruined abbey and its 
arches, over a low stone wall. At the cottage doors 
was the only sign of active life in the place, for old 
women stood there working at making gloves, like 
" Hannah at the window binding shoes." 

The most complete relic of the past in Glastonbury 
is the abbot's kitchen, which stands off in a cow-field, 
and is a large square building with a tall octagonal 
stone roof surmounted by a sort of stone tower. We 
were able to rouse the keeper of the key of the cow- 
field and so saw this best feature of all the ruins, al- 
though it was so early as nine in the morning ! 

We entered the kitchen itself through a doorway 
and found it a large square room with four fire- 
places in the corners and with ingenious air-holes up 
above for carrying away the smoke. Altogether it 
was a fascinating relic of the homely life of the past. 

Close beside Glastonbury is a conical hill, some 
hundreds of feet high, called the Tor, and a little 
tower on this hill can be seen for many miles in every 
direction. We remembered, as we motored past it, 
the dramatic tragedy that occurred here, for Henry 
the Eighth, bound as he was to make himself supreme 
head of the church, found himself opposed by the Ab- 
bot of Glastonbury ; and, immensely powerful though 
the abbot was — in fact, because of his very power and 
prominence, so that he might be the most striking 
of examples — he was promptly tried for treason and 
hanged upon the top of this high hill so that all Eng- 
land literally might see that Henry was in earnest. 



THE WATERY CITIES 107 

Perhaps it need not be added that it was not neces- 
sary to hang any more abbots, for if any of them had 
opinions they promptly forgot them. 

We left a just-awakening town as we motored 
out of Glastonbury, and a clump of two-horse tandem 
carts in front of a wayside tavern at the edge of the 
town showed how half a dozen drivers were also 
awakening. On we went, past roofs of tile, weathered 
and mossed and lichened in yellows and browns and 
reds and greens, on past a village of roofs of thatch — 
and all was old and all was picturesque and all was 
interesting; even a humorous pig reflectively rubbing 
his side on a gray-boled beech while he looked at us, 
humorously askant, was interesting — for this was 
England! 



CHAPTER XI 

THE COAST OF SOMERSET AND DEVON 

JUST a few miles out of Glastonbury we reached 
a ridge-road which led us for miles between 
sweeping views over levels, and we knew that 
a bit of green richness not very far off on our left 
was the scene of Sedgemoor, where the thousands of 
brave rustics under Monmouth, with their scythes 
fastened to poles (and they were probably sickles, 
which are all that one sees in this country!), went 
down in defeat before the regulars of King James; 
they had no chance, poor fellows, even had not the 
second in command of the King James army been one 
of the greatest of soldiers, destined to become world- 
famous under the name of the Duke of Marlborough. 
All is peaceful enough now. We pass a flock of 
sheep with a dog and a shepherd, and all the sheep 
have been sheared and it gives them a queerly long- 
legged effect; there are neither high walls nor high 
hedges to shut in the views ; we see an unknown ruin 
on a distant height; we see a fascinating line of 
ragged pines; we see a great pasture thickly dotted 
with sheep and cattle and with little black piglets 
to add color contrast and pink piglets for piquancy; 
we pass a butcher-boy, long-aproned, on his bicycle, 
and a bicycled parcel-postman, and we go through 
Bridgwater, an ancient and interesting-looking town, 
and we do not stop except to glance for a mo- 
ment at the house where the sturdy Admiral Blake 
was born and at a little statue which has been put up 
in his honor — and it is often the case that a small 

108 




The Tor and its tower, near Glastonbury 




On the moors of Devon 




The beautiful coast of Devon 




A TYPICAL OLD INN COACHYARD 



SOMERSET AND DEVON 109 

statue put up by local pride means more than would 
some huge ostentatious memorial. We get beyond 
Bridgwater, and we pass a stage-coach full of pas- 
sengers driving to town — driving out of the ancient 
past! — and we pass traction-engines towing little 
cars of coal or brick or road material as if to show 
that, after all, we are still in the present, and we pass 
telegraph poles topped with little sheet-iron hats, and 
traveling venders' carts full of shelves of dishes, and 
we glide through a fascinating village with its ancient 
square-towered church and age-colored houses of 
brick and with little pony-carts driven sedately 
about. 

Flocks of sheep are grazing in the fields and other 
sheep go wandering along the roadside. We whirl by 
a field ablaze with poppies and we run beside low- 
edged hills which gradually rise on our left, and in 
front of us we see great trees that bend forward over 
the road. There are hedges again, low hedges, and 
the grass is thick with buttercups, and pink campions 
grow between the hedges and the road. We pass a 
'busload of ' camp-fire girls," all in blue, and they 
cheerfully wave at us and every one of them is smiling, 
happy, pretty and alert. 

We run into the plain little village of Nether 
Stowey, and here we pause for a few minutes to look 
at the house where Coleridge wrote the " Ancient 
Mariner," for assuredly such a house is a place of a 
great achievement. It surprises us that Coleridge 
could have chosen to live in such a very plain house, 
on this very unattractive street, for the house has 
always been plain and the street has always been un- 
attractive; it could not have been the low rent which 
attracted him, for he could have got a prettier place, 
elsewhere, for less. Perhaps he taught near this cot- 
tage; but it is for his use of words and not for his 
choice of home surroundings that the world remem- 



110 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



bers him; perhaps at severely plain Nether Stowey 
he was able to put into his " Ancient Mariner " a cer- 
tain grimness that he could not have achieved in, for 
example, the charming Lake Country. 

Leaving the town, we are at once at the foot of a 
hill, and on into the open country again, and there 
are wood-cutters, and women stooping along the road 
under great bundles of fagots, and we follow a red 
shale road beneath green hedges, and we are looking 
for the sea, for we know we are nearing it, and in a 
little while, over to our right, just a few miles away, 
comes a sudden glimpse of the broad and glimmering 
Bristol Channel, and a great headland rises abrupt 
and grand, and with this headland in view and the 
wide hills about us, we stop for another of our al fresco 
luncheons. 

We go on, up a road which looks out over a splen- 
did expanse of the sea ; a road that is now high above 
the bordering greenery and now goes dropping down 
below some undulation, and the hedges often top 
ridges of earth that border the road; and now and 
then there is a group of farm buildings, nestled away 
from the sea, and great moors sweep slowly upward. 
Everything is beautiful and everything is glorious, 
the hills, the headlands and the water, and we feel how 
wonderfully much of beauty can be put within a 
short space of a few hours. 

And the road narrows, and there we dip between 
stone walls and meet in this cut fully a hundred and 
fifty sheep, with two dogs and two shepherds, and 
although we almost stop the car to let them all pass 
there is much trouble and agitation among the flock, 
but their agitation cannot be compared with that of 
the dogs, who find themselves thus facing a great 
emergency but who just glance at the shepherds as 
if to say, " Don't worry, we will see to this " ; and they 
do see to it, capably, swiftly and efficiently. 



SOMERSET AND DEVON 111 

It is a region of casement windows and scarlet 
poppies and hawthorn still in bloom but fading, and 
in one place there are myriad fallen blossoms of horse- 
chestnut flowers carpeting the ground in pink beauty. 
A man goes by jauntily dangling a rabbit; and horses 
are tugging a huge log; there are shirt-sleeved farm 
laborers in waistcoats of green-and-yellow velveteen, 
and there are white-whiskered men driving little two- 
wheeled carts behind fat little white ponies, and you 
cannot imagine any such ponies with different kinds 
of men or any such men with different kinds of carts 
or ponies, for all must have originated together; it 
all seems so perfectly natural. 

We come to a stone building with its front covered 
with the most remarkable roses we have ever seen, in 
a glory of white and red along the entire face of the 
building. And we particularly notice the exquisite 
La Marque rose with fully a thousand blossoms in ex- 
quisite white, and there is also a " Glory of Die 
John," as the sole inhabitant of the building tells us; 
at least, the sole inhabitant that we can find, when he is 
finally discovered; and the difficulty of finding any- 
one, and the wonder of such superb flowers at the 
place (for there are not only the roses but a garden 
rich in other flowers of red and orange and white and 
blue), seem still more astonishing when we find that 
this is a country police station. We find, too, that 
these flowers are not only the pride of the police but 
of the entire countryside, and the solitary policeman 
whom we have found explains that the delicate La 
Marque vine, which is many years old and has a stem 
that is thick at the ground, has always been pruned 
in the summer and that its roots are protected by 
coming from under the house, for thus they resist the 
winter cold. 

But there really cannot be real cold here, for we 
see many hedges planted on top of narrow earth- 



112 FOUR ON A TOUR 

walls, which quite evidently are never heaved by the 
frost. 

We swing a little away from the sea and we pass 
little old women forever sunning themselves at little 
cottage doors beside scarlet poppies. And we most 
unexpectedly see a pretty nun, clearly out of some 
medieval convent! — but she shrieks quite a pretty 
little modern shriek and hurriedly crosses herself and 
runs to one side as she hears the honk. And we run 
through a constantly rolling bit of country ; and little 
and bridgeless brooks go lilting across the road, and 
ever-gathering moors are more and more rising in 
great sweeps. We pass the ever-recurrent tramp with 
a woman, and the ever-recurrent itinerant show, and 
the ever-recurrent van with its traveling family — how 
strange a life, especially for the children, always to 
travel and never to get to the end! 

There are more deep green hedges on top of multi- 
colored stone-and-earth walls, and on these walls are 
also great quantities of little white flowers. And we 
make a turn that is particularly sharp even for Eng- 
land, frequent though hidden and dangerous turns 
are over there, and go down a steep hill into Porlock, 
a village set in a bight among the mountains, a place 
which strikes you as the sign and symbol of livable 
loveliness, with roses, thatch, quaint windows and 
casements, and little noses of thatch at the ends of the 
ridgepoles, and with each house prettier than its 
neighbor. Surely, one may suggest that to live in 
this, delightful place would be to take time by the 
Porlock. 

Then up an interminable hill, by a private toll road, 
to escape a grade almost impossible: and if the Eng- 
lish admit a road to be steep the motorist had better 
pay attention! For a time the road goes through 
dense woods of Druid-like, gray-mossed trees and 
solid thickets of small oaks and of larger holly trees of 






SOMERSET AND DEVON 113 

extremely dark green ; such a thicket, this, as it would 
not be humanly possible to walk through. The road 
mounts above these dense woods and goes on and on 
ever higher and higher and higher round the shoulder 
of the mountainside ; by far the longest climb that our 
motor has made. 

It is really an unforgivably long hill, the builders 
having evidently seen the distant top and determined 
to go right over it ; though, really, it is a well-graded 
road and in no place too steep. 

We saw far below us, as we began the ascent, a 
motor aiming for the hill that we had avoided and we 
almost envied the other people except that we were 
getting magnificent views; but after a while we saw 
that the motor had turned back, balked, and it fol- 
lowed us up our long grade after all. And such a 
succession of changing views as that road with its 
twists and turns presents! — views of the brilliant sea 
in splendid gleaming sweeps, of cliffs and sand, of 
heights thick-covered with trees or rich in bracken 
and in foxglove in bloom, while, lining the road close 
beside us, are myriad bluebells and yellow-flowering 
whin bushes. The opposite side of the Bristol Chan- 
nel, fifteen miles or so away, shows as a white line, 
long and faint. 

In a little cleft below we saw a tiny nestle of cot- 
tages with thatched roofs mustard-colored with moss ; 
and pheasants were flitting across the road ; and at the 
summit we looked off at the blue sea and the blue 
sky and could scarcely tell where one merged into the 
other. And the air was of unimaginable fineness. 
And we halted there for a little to gain a fuller and 
deeper impression of the wonder and the beauty of 
it all. 

From a great high level at the summit a gently- 
rolling road led us unexpectedly away from the sea 
for a space and into an immense expanse of moorland; 



114 FOUR ON A TOUR 

all at once we get a sweep of Exmoor, magnificent in 
impressiveness and in immensity of effect; stupen- 
dous, bare, bleak, even monstrous is the roll of the 
awe-inspiring moors. 

The road is lined with stone walls that bulk thick 
and high from the gathered earth and shrubs and 
grass of centuries, for these are very old walls, and 
these are very steep hills, the roads being made for 
the days of pack-saddles and for Exmoor ponies that 
start up steepnesses on a gallop. 

It is on this high lonely land that we leave Somer- 
set and enter Devon. We have but a brief experi- 
ence of this vastly undulating desolateness, and we 
know that somewhere in the heart of that high deso- 
lateness is the Doone valley, the home of Lorna 
Doone; and then we descend to little Lynmouth. 
The final descent into that place is down a narrow 
cut, remarkably steep, and it was in bad condi- 
tion through being wet and slimy from a rain 
that had not dried. For some reason quite a num- 
ber of vehicles had been stalled in a line at the 
top of this drop and when the line started we all 
came down into Lynmouth one after another with 
great swiftness in a slipping and dropping effect. 
Immediately behind us was an enormous forty-pas- 
senger motor excursion 'bus, painted scarlet, whose 
passengers got out in fright and walked. With us it 
was a matter of mild speculation what would happen 
if that mighty scarlet engine of destruction should 
take a notion to go faster than we, in that slit of a 
pass! 

It is a curious thing about motor guide-books in 
England, that although they carefully point out 
warnings of grades that are one in ten or so, they 
quite omit any mention whatever of what seem like 
one in five! And after all, nothing did happen to 
any of the vehicles, although that drop suggested a 






SOMERSET AND DEVON 115 

ride on a roller-coaster or " rapid the descent to 
Avernus." 

\Lynmouth is a wonderfully pretty and romantically 
et town, with mountains closely hemming it in and 
the broad sea stretching away immediately in front, 
and a delightfully wild mountain stream, in rocky 
and unspoiled condition, dashing right through the 
place. It is thick with little hotels and tea-rooms and 
everything is nestled in flowers, and all is fresh and 
fair in a way characteristic of Devon. At the end 
of this roadway, by the ocean edge, on a picturesque 
old stone pier, is a little lighthouse on which is an old 
cresset — an open-work iron basket, for beacon fires. 
How to get out of Lynmouth was a proposition, 
for there was no low road out of the place and in 
either one direction or another one must climb, but we 
were told by local authorities, as a happy solution, to 
take a funicular railway which had been built, for 
motors, to meet this very difficulty. But perhaps we 
really should have followed a road up the stream for 
a distance to where there was a new-built road with 
a grade not quite impossibly steep, instead of taking 
the funicular as we did, for the platform to hold the 
car was, with a carelessness of construction and opera- 
tion that would not be permitted in countries where 
personal rights are better safeguarded (and this is 
said in all seriousness), operated with no proper pre- 
caution against the slipping back of the car, which 
would really have been an unpleasant matter, for it 
would have meant a descent of several hundred feet 
to the rocks and the sea; and at the top they were 
quite unable to bring the level of the platform flush 
with the level of the landing-stage, thus making a 
particularly dangerous condition. It required four 
men and the power of the engine to lift the car over 
at the top of the abyss — and we paid half a sovereign 
for the experience! 



116 FOUR ON A TOUR 

But we were now in perched Lynton, with its 
perched hotels; one of which gave us an attractive 
and attracting sight with a fine American flag flying 
over its high-set tea-garden, on the steep mountain- 
side; and we left by an exceedingly twisting and 
agreeable road, and in the course of a few miles sud- 
denly found the road almost slipping away from 
under us as we went down into a village ; and the worst 
of this road was that as we approached the steeper 
part of the declivity, at the bottom, we had to dodge 
in and out in the narrow road among little cottages 
built to the very road's edge, all this forming a steep, 
deep, tangled little place called Parracombe. The 
chief industry or at least the principal occupation of 
the men of Parracombe seems to be to stand oafishly 
and watch in agreeable anticipation for some car to 
come disastrously down their hill. 

It looked as difficult to get out of Parracombe as to 
get out of Lynmouth for the road led up with aston- 
ishing steepness, but fortunately we had been told, 
some miles back, how to avoid this, by turning into a 
lane at the foot of a hill to the right, past the Fox 
and Geese Inn and away from the men watching for 
disaster, and afterwards taking the first turn back 
to the left, to the main road. 

But although we speak critically now and then of 
the steepness and curves and narrowness of English 
roads, we cannot too strongly say that we do not in 
the slightest degree regret having gone over even 
the most difficult, for with care and good fortune 
nothing happened to us even on these steep roads of 
Devon; at the same time, it is undeniable that many 
of the English roads must be seriously attended to 
before the time that motor cars become as much a 
feature of the roads as in America; but we enjoyed 
our journeyings so infinitely that we cannot regret 
having followed our course nor could we think of 






SOMERSET AND DEVON 117 

advising others not to do so. Quite probably, too, 
the absolute unexpectedness of the ascents and drops 
and bad curves made them appreciably worse than 
they would have appeared if we had known of them. 
But, as we have already remarked, the motor-maps 
and guides are strangely silent as to things of danger, 
although places that are not in the least difficult are 
formally spoken of. 

We spent the night at Combe Martin, one of those 
old English towns with an inimitably long-drawn-out 
single street. It really seemed as if we should never 
come to our inn, but we came to it at last and, asking 
if there were a garage, the answer was : " Yes, sir. 
We put it in the town-hall. Yes, sir, thank you; " 
that eternal and meaningless " Thank you," with 
its rising inflection, following even such an amusing 
statement as this ; but it was meant as very literal and 
not amusing, for the car was really locked up for the 
night in the basement of the town-hall. 

With the morning we started for Ilf racombe, along 
a cliff road, through superbness of heights and depths, 
and we found that with all the grandeur and stu- 
pendousness, there was also the wonder of rich green- 
ery, close to the very ocean though it is. Enormous 
ferns line the road. The hedges are of deep green 
and mostly of beech and holly stunted by many years 
of hacking and clipping, and grow upon stone walls 
covered with earth and thick with grass and mosses. 
Numberless rhododendrons in bloom overhang the 
road; they tell you that a bit of rhododendron stuck 
into the ground will grow as a bush! And oaks and 
pines and firs and beeches thickly border the way. 
Often the hedges are so high as to shut off the ocean, 
and the next moment they are lower, and perhaps 
you will see rocky coves, with fishing-boats, far below, 
or a schooner with sails all set, sailing close inshore. 

It was a morning of cool gray mist; white waves 



118 FOUR ON A TOUR 

were softly breaking against the cliff; the fishing- 
boats had white or ochre sails; other ships lay in the 
dim-seen distance and all was a misty and glamorous 
glory ; we could see the level water of the windless day 
and the black reefs and the cliffs and the mountains, 
and then the swaying mist would softly shut them in. 

Yesterday was a day of brilliant blue water and 
blue sky, but to-day is a day of soft gray water and 
soft gray sky; and the seagulls go flying and scream- 
ing around the cliffs. 

We pass a little village with vegetable gardens 
divided by little hedges that go running up almost 
perpendicular hills, and a little later the car rolls 
into Ilfracombe, a city of hotels and boarding-houses 
and tourists' shops, beautifully facing out over rocks 
and sea. 

It is a modern place, a gentle peaceful seaside re- 
sort; the English do take their seaside so pleasantly 
and placidly! Villas perch along the edges of the 
town, each with its rosebushes; and white-capped 
old ladies are clipping rosebushes and little old men 
are clipping rosebushes and young women are clip- 
ping rosebushes. Other people are riding in great 
motor- charabancs or in funny bath-chair baby- 
carriages drawn here by ponies instead of by hand as 
in Bath itself. And everybody else is just looking 
out over the sea and thinking — or just looking out 
over the sea. 



CHAPTER XII 

CLOVELLY AND TINTAGEL 

WE chose, out of Ilfracombe, a fine cross- 
country road that led us easily to Barn- 
staple, an ancient town that scarcely looks 
it, with a very interesting sixteen-arched stone bridge, 
seven centuries old, which has necessarily been 
widened with ironwork. Barnstaple is called Barum, 
just as later we are to find Salisbury called Sarum — 
each of them an eminently respectable place to have 
an alias! 

Beyond Barnstaple it was a pleasant run, past 
hedges blossoming with honeysuckle and eglantine, 
to busy Bideford, the busiest manufacturing place 
we saw in Devonshire, and it was a surprise to find 
so large and busy a place, for we had thought of it 
only as the town of Westward Ho! 

Past Bideford it was less than a dozen miles to 
Clovelly, and we felt disappointed after the recent 
magnificent scenery, for the road became rather ordi- 
nary. We had heard of Clovelly as a place of unusual 
beauty but in its approach there was no indication of 
it. We left the main highway and motored along a 
short branch-road with masses of fuchsia growing 
profusely over its bordering walls, and came to a 
place where our motor car could be left and cared for, 
and proceeded on foot down a steep, narrow lane 
with views in front, across intervening greenery, of 
miles of tall-rising cliffs with the water breaking at 
their feet. 

And all at once the scene changes; we turn a cor- 

119 



120 FOUR ON A TOUR 

ner: we no longer see cliffs or beach or water; in- 
stead we see in front of us a street, a street so narrow 
that you may shake hands across it, a street of cobble- 
stones the width of the narrow way and of steep 
stone-paved descents, a street where either side is an 
irregular wavering indented line of little houses, of 
casement windows, of dormered roofs, of diamond 
panes, of little balconies, of ships' masts for flag- 
poles. 

This street is Clovelly: and it is a fetching street, 
a charming street, a street of white and green, a street 
of the most brilliant white and the most brilliant 
green: a street of ancientness, of beauty, of cleanli- 
ness, even of immaculateness. 

The women are all white-aproned and the men are 
clad in the blue jerseys of the sea. Down and down 
we go. Probably no horse has ever walked down this 
street; certainly no vehicle ever passed up or down; 
but there are little skids which are slid and dragged 
by hand over the polished little cobbles and steps, and 
there are a few panniered donkeys used for burdens 
and now and then for some visitor. At the bottom 
of the descent and in sight of the sea the street sweeps 
and turns and turns again and passes directly through 
an old white house and opens upon a curving stone 
quay, shaped like a fish-hook, and a great, sweeping 
high-cliffed bay. 

On the broad shingle beach a fleet of little boats 
is moored by long brown chains, waiting for the tide 
to float them, and other boats of the village dot the 
sea, and looking back from the quay there are tall 
cliffs of greenery and a few white houses and no sign 
whatever of the wonderful street down which we have 
just come! 

A friendly, helpful, soft-voiced, happy folk are 
these of Clovelly. When boats put out together for 
passengers from a visiting local steamer, the boatman 







Yankees at King Arthur's Castle 




The rocky approach to Tintagel 



CLOVELLY AND TINTAGEL 121 

who gets but one passenger does as well as the man 
who gets many, for the money is equally divided; 
when a fisherman is sick his fellow-villagers divide 
with him until he is able once more to put to sea. 

This very ancient village is an excellent example 
of good results from a system that must needs in itself 
be evil. For every particle of land is owned, and 
always has been owned, by the lord of the manor; or 
the lady of the manor, as it is at present, who holds 
everyone in the village in the grip of a short lease 
in place of the leases for three lives, of the past ; and 
that the present owner is a beneficent despot who 
appreciates the value of retaining the old-time 
charm and quaintness does not assure the future of 
Clovelly. 

Vines cling to the house-fronts. At cottage doors, 
in cottage windows, in miraculously tiny cottage gar- 
dens there are masses of geranium positively mar- 
velous in scarlet bloom, and there are roses, there are 
glorious peonies in a precious bit of ground that is 
but six inches wide, there is the fair white stock, 
sweet-smelling like cloves, there are wall-flowers in 
their shadings of brown or yellow, and up a little path- 
way there are tree fuchsias, thick with thousands of 
blossoms on branches that are fifteen feet in length, 
and all this on that little ancient street climbing up 
from the sea. 

Clovelly is fortunately not to be reached by rail, so 
only the people get here who really wish to see it. 
For them it is easily reachable, and in mid-season it 
is thronged by visitors who come by charabanc or 
boat and for the greater part stay but through the 
mid-day hours. In early June there are not many vis- 
itors, and as evening came on not a single one was to 
be seen, all having gone to their rooms or returned 
to other towns. Then the village became its natural 
self; some of the women taking in their tiny tea signs 



122 FOUR ON A TOUR 

and sitting out on their tiny little terraced balconies 
and quietly greeting neighbors on the opposite side 
of the narrow way, and a knot of blue-jerseyed men 
gathered at a little outlook point and looked quietly 
out over the bay and the shadowy cliffs and the dis- 
tant light on Bideford bar, and at the mist that was 
slowly dimming the water and the headlands, even 
though the moon was rising over the wooded cliffs. 
And how often the moon comes on one's travels just 
to add a touch of magic to a place of beauty ! 

The folk of Clovelly are a silent folk, but one old 
sailor was moved to unwonted talk of his sea voy- 
ages, and especially of sailing as one of a crew on a 
yacht to the Mediterranean. He liked the towns at 
the base of the Italian cliffs and remembered them all 
by name; but they were not clean enough for him. 
The temples at Paestum did not greatly interest him, 
for they had no windows and the roofs were off! 
Venice he liked least of all : " There was no proper 
place to walk; I could only walk around their bit of 
a square " : and this from a man of the perpendicular 
street of Clovelly! 

The village grows strangely silent. And there are 
distant footsteps on the cobble-stones and distant 
snatches of song and a distant hail, and a sibilant 
murmuring from the mostly monosyllabic men — and 
then, as old Pepys said, " and then to bed." 

We were awakened by the crying of the seabirds 
that flew past our windows, and then came the clat- 
ter of the skids with the morning bread and butter 
and eggs and clotted cream for the village, and then 
the clattering feet of a little donkey led by a uni- 
formed postman bringing the day's mail; and we 
walked down again to the lookout, and jackdaws and 
milk-white seagulls and puffins were flying about or 
resting on the rocks; and fluttering near the shore 
were the chaffinch and the jet-black jackdaw, and the 



CLOVELLY AND TINTAGEL 123 

linnet with its red breast and the bright white on 
its wings. 

After breakfast at the pleasant little place where 
we had stayed, we were asked to write in the guest- 
book, and on the previous page we noticed a most de- 
lightful appreciation of the house signed A. Conan 
Doyle. He spoke of the agreeable treatment given 
him and said that the hostess was one of the few in 
England who could rise to the height of a seven- 
thirty breakfast; and it amused us to find that the 
hostess herself had no idea that Doctor Doyle was 
anything of a celebrity. 

It is well for Clovelly that the physical characteris- 
tics of its surroundings make it impossible for it to 
expand; so that, although it is so many centuries old 
— it is mentioned in Domesday Book — it is small for 
its age. A most attractive and final impression of 
the place, and as unexpected as it is delightful, comes 
from entering a private road of the lady of the manor 
— the public are allowed to enter it — which skirts the 
edge of the cliff above the village, for there is a glory 
of trees in oak and beech and ash that are green to 
their bases with lichen and ivy, and there are shrubs 
and flowers and enormous fern and bracken, and 
through the greenery there are glimpses of the roofs 
far below, or of the cliffs, or of the sea, or of long 
and distant stretches of white sand, and ever the blue 
sky merges into the blue sea and the blue sea merges 
into the blue sky and all is loveliness. 

Leaving Clovelly behind, there are miles and miles 
of smiling desolation, with seldom a house to be seen, 
a rolling country with sweeping views, and with sel- 
dom a tree, and with hedges checkering and criss- 
crossing in every direction; and we remembered that 
Mrs. Browning somewhere speaks of some part of 
England as " tied up fast with hedges," and it seems 
as if such a description would here apply. 



124. 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



We passed a party of camping trampers ; two fami- 
lies, with poor and ragged tents and the children well- 
spoken, though in ragged clothes. These were not 
begging trampers, but an industrious group; they 
even had a horse, and it was philosophically cropping 
the roadside grass ; the elders, both men and women, 
were off on some temporary work, and a pile of tent 
pegs pointed out one of the kinds of work done by 
the children. 

As we went on we noticed that the chaffinch and 
the linnet were often seen, and one chaffinch was so 
tame that it actually lighted upon the wind-shield for 
a few moments as if to give us a friendly greeting 
into Cornwall — for we were passing the Cornwall 
line and we were bound for the ancient castle which 
more than any other is connected with King Arthur, 
ancient Tintagel — and we were going to King Ar- 
thur's castle in a motor car! 

Stretches of illimitable moor, bleak and brownish 
green and bare of trees, seldom a solitary house in 
sight for miles and miles, a drear immensity of space 
— and we barely noticed little old Stratton as we 
passed swiftly through it and again out into the 
loneliness, nor did we pause for pretty Boscastle, 
tucked down as it is in a great hollow and proud of 
its reputation of being the prettiest village in Corn- 
wall. We felt the drear immensities of that drear 
coast — for the Atlantic Ocean was never far away, 
although out of sight from the road — as a fit spot for 
tremendous and lost history, and our minds were full 
of Tintagel and Arthur. 

For there can be no doubt that King Arthur ex- 
isted; the immemorial and unbroken tradition, the 
fixed belief of the people, the church bells of sunken 
Lyonesse still faintly ringing, as the dim old fancy 
has it, underneath the Cornish sea — how can even the 
soberest-minded doubt! There is no fixed and pro- 



CLOVELLY AND TINTAGEL 125 

saic history of King Arthur, but there is something 
infinitely better, for there is that at which history aims 
in vain: a tremendous impression. 

We had had a rapid run of over thirty miles from 
Clovelly and we had gone up a great, long hill, and 
high, high up we came suddenly and unexpectedly 
upon a village which has been given the name of 
Tintagel; and we felt the intensest shock of disap- 
pointment. For it is a village which, although it has 
a few old-time houses, is a modern and unattractive 
place for summer trippers, and on a treeless cliff 
nearby is a big modern hotel. We noticed signs of 
u Land for Sale," one of the few places in England 
where we have seen any such signs, and this was ap- 
parently the explanation of the unattractive modern 
homes, and we realized again that there are strong 
advantages, from a picturesque standpoint, in the 
system by which land is held by great proprietors, 
whatever criticisms may fairly be made from other 
standpoints. 

But in a few minutes the village and the hotel are 
forgotten and the impressions of tremendousness re- 
turn even intenser and stronger than before, for we 
have left the car and gone down a winding path and 
have come to where the mighty Atlantic stretches off 
into dim distances and where we mount upward in 
our approach to the castle of Tintagel and are faced 
by a cliff stupendously black and stern. 

As we cross a narrow causeway a tremendous wind 
blows through the narrow gap and lifts the seabirds 
as they try to dive, and there is a long line of rocky 
cliffs on either side and on either side of us the break- 
ers are dashing in in angry white. We go up and 
up steps that are chopped out of the solid stone and 
we reach an old wooden door in the ancient gateway 
of the castle and we unlock the door and enter and 
lock ourselves inside — we have been given the key by 



126 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



the custodian, who, with a fine sense of the fitness of 
things, lives in a little house quite out of sight, back 
toward the village — and we feel to the full the splen- 
did impressiveness of it all. 

Few fragments of the castle remain, but they are 
enough to show what it must have been in ancient 
days, standing there on its ocean-girdled promontory 
overhanging the sea. It is all glorious and terrible, 
and thoughts come thronging of Arthur the King 
and of the Knights of the Table Round, and we feel 
a vivid sense of the long-past time. How lonely and 
impressive it all seems, here above the roaring ocean, 
and how mighty and impregnable must it all have 
been ! — and yet all has vanished as a tale that is told ; 
a tale that is only mistily told — and we walk softly 
over ground that is all glowing with the flowering 
seapink. 

Tintagel had been our ultimate western aim, and so 
here we turned our back to the setting sun and swung 
to the eastward. 



CHAPTER XIII 

EASTWARD HO! 

AS we left Tintagel we ran into great moors, 
stem, dour, solemn, in sweeps of lonely gran- 
' deur, and they begin to be depressive and they 
make for sadness; and then, suddenly, we are in a 
lush green England again, with trees and vines and 
bushes and flowers and grass; a wonderful and al- 
most instantaneous change into a rich and beautiful 
country. We go on through Launceston, a pleasant 
and modern-looking place on a hillside, with a gloomy 
old castle that has looked down frowningly upon it 
since Norman days; and we pass through the town 
and go out through an ancient gateway that spans the 
public street — a felicitous gateway, felicitously used 
— and with little windows, diamond-paned, in the 
rooms above the gate. 

Not far beyond Launceston we were perilously near 
a tragedy. We were coasting slowly down a road 
cut straight and narrow between close-bordering 
stone walls, and it was fortunate that the power was 
shut off and the car under quiet control, for a two- 
wheeled cart was coming up the hill toward us with 
a woman and a baby and two girls, and in an instant, 
just as it was passing us and without the slightest 
warning, the horse, which until then had given not 
the slightest indication of fright, suddenly whirled 
and backed the cart directly in front of our wheels, 
closing the entire road. For a moment it seemed as 
if collision was inevitable and it would have been seri- 
ous indeed to overturn a cart with such a load, but 

127 



128 FOUR ON A TOUR 

fortunately the car was stopped, although within an 
inch of collision, and at the same time one of us 
jumped out and caught the horse by the bridle, and all 
was safe, and the horse was led up the hill and the 
party went on their way. But it was a proof, had any 
proof been needed, that vigilance can never be 
relaxed. 

We went motoring through an unusually beautiful 
stretch of countryside, and the road had notably 
broadened, and nearing Okehampton veritable moun- 
tains of moorland came in sight, lofty and dreary. 

Okehampton itself did not detain us, and from that 
place to Exeter we made a detour, as we were warned 
of a torn-up road ; and, as it turned out, we were glad 
of this detour, for it took us through a charming 
country and into a little village, Sampford Courtney, 
in the middle of which we forded a little stream that 
rambled across the road; and there were white cot- 
tages and dark thatched roofs and green hedges and 
red roses and gray walls and brown roads and white 
and pink flowers, and baby yellow ducks on the green 
water with a mothering black hen a-flutter with 
anxiety and anxiously calling out little warning 
calls; and in this little village we had one of those 
unexpectedly pleasant experiences which may hap- 
pen at any time in England, for we stopped to ask 
a question at a little cottage and we were asked to 
come in, and there was a yellow cat lying on the 
stone floor near the fireplace, which was the cook- 
stove of the house, and in the little front room was 
an ancient oak dresser quite full of interesting old 
blue-and-white china and luster ware, and the dresser 
itself belonged to the old grandfather of eighty-two, 
who mumbled that it was very old when he was a boy. 
The cottage had such astonishingly thick walls of 
plaster-covered clay mixed with straw as to make the 
rooms almost impossibly tiny. It was, in all, not 




Cheddar cows by the waterside 




MUDWALLED COTTAGES OF SaMPFORD COURTNEY 




The old guildhall of Exeter 




ILDREX OF GYPSY-LIKE CARAVAXERS 



EASTWARD HO ! 129 

much more than a glimpse into a cottager's home, but 
it left such a pleasant impression ! 

As we went on we noticed that there were other 
cottages built of clay and straw. And the road led 
narrowing between tall banks, and through villages, 
with lofty stretches of Dartmoor from time to time 
in towering heights on our right; and there were 
many thatched cottages, and even the hay-ricks were 
thatched, and the hedges were aglow with campions 
or yellow with buttercups, and there were pleasant 
white cottages with trellised arches of roses over their 
doors and with fruit trees and trained flowers against 
the cottage walls. There were long lines of big beech- 
trees growing on the very tops of the stone-and-earth 
walls, and views alternately wide and restricted, and 
ever and anon there would again come wide-sweeping 
views of the miles of distant purple moorland. 

We passed tandem teams with two or three or even 
four horses, we passed sleek brown cattle lying in the 
midst of a great field of yellow buttercups, we passed 
gardens rich with enormous strawberries, we passed 
through gloomy roads canyoned with huge stone 
walls, and right into a village of vividest white, 
Crediton, a little place with an interesting town cross 
and a stately old church. But we did not go into the 
church, for one early learns that to go into every in- 
teresting old church in England would demand life- 
times. We crossed a brimming river — how one comes 
to realize that in those delightful words of Tennyson, 
' brimming river," he described a frequently recur- 
rent feature of the finest of English landscapes! — 
and then we are in Exeter. 

Few of all the towns or cities of England are so 
satisfactory, so attractive, so agreeable as Exeter. It 
is not only that it is old and that it was old even so 
long ago as when the mother of King Harold escaped 
through a town gate (still partially preserved even in 



130 FOUR ON A TOUR 

this twentieth century) when William the Conqueror 
entered the place, for other cities of England are also 
old, but that the city is of an individual attractiveness, 
largely owing, apparently, to the fine type of people 
who make up its population — at least this was the im- 
pression that we came to feel there. The men are 
alert and the women are smartly dressed and there 
is a general air of exquisite, quiet living in the resi- 
dential streets and the " circuses." It is a fair city 
— indeed, it is a city of savoir faire. 

Exeter is a place of fine modernity, but at the same 
time it keeps closely in touch with the past; for ex- 
ample, one of the citizens still receives two pennies 
a year for permitting a beam to rest in his wall just 
because that beam has paid two pennies a year for 
some six centuries. The easy talk of the people in 
general is of some King This or Queen That of the 
past. When, many years ago, the then King wrote — 
Edward the First or Third or something — directing 
that the local guilds give a certain citizen a permit to 
do business in the city without paying a big fee, for 
the man was rich and powerful and had interested the 
King in his behalf, the guilds refused and successfully 
persisted in their refusal : and the people are as proud 
of the achievement as if it were only of yesterday. 

There is a beautiful grayish-black cathedral in 
Exeter and it is set a few feet below the level of a 
broad, open space adjoining the main part of the 
city and just off at one side from it. It is curiously 
buttressed in such a way that one may walk along 
outside beneath the buttresses, and there is a splendid 
dignity about two old towers of which the city feels 
mildly proud, for one is at each end of the transept, 
and this is the only cathedral in England with such 
a feature. 

In the interior of the cathedral there is a curiously 
interesting minstrels' gallery, with figures of angels 



EASTWARD HO ! 131 

playing on cittern and clarion, psaltery and bag- 
pipe, sackbut and timbrel and cymbals. But we were 
still more interested in an inscription under a great 
stained-glass window which said that it was affection- 
ately " dedicated to the memory of the men of Devon 
who died in the service of their country during the 
war in South Africa, 1899-1902," and we were 
equally interested in another inscription to the men 
of the region who died in India, and we were inter- 
ested in the battle-flags that are preserved there. 
Soldiers are buried in this cathedral who have fought 
in every war from the Conquest down to the present 
time, and there will undoubtedly be some great and 
solemn memorial to the men who have died in the lat- 
est war of all in France. 

Close beside an ancient stone effigy there ticks, in 
plain sight, the great pendulum of the cathedral clock, 
marking the ticking off of the centuries of inexorable 
time. 

A cathedral, this, with a general effect of sweet 
and agreeable intimacy; you love it, not that it is so 
grand as some, not that it is so large as some, but that 
it is altogether fine and of a delightful mellowness — 
as indeed the entire town is. 

In Exeter we noticed fine evidences of great and 
justifiable civic pride, and, as a perfect indication of 
this, there is preserved in High Street, in the very cen- 
ter of the city, an ancient guild-hall, a really beautiful 
building, projecting over the sidewalk and resting on 
fine stone pillars that rise from the curb. We en- 
tered by a remarkable Renaissance door, a positively 
adorable door, and the interior of the building was 
shown to us by a man deliciously full of the feeling 
of Exeter. First, there is the almost chapel-like guild- 
room, paneled, and with a groined roof; but even 
more interesting than the guild-room is the mayor's 
chamber over the sidewalk, furnished with admirable 



132 FOUR ON A TOUR 

old furniture of various periods, not as a museum, 
but as a room for every-day use ; it is the mayor's own 
parlor and it is finely paneled with oak, and there 
are interesting paintings on the wall, including the 
portrait of Princess Henrietta, the daughter of 
Charles the First, who was born in Exeter in the 
troublous times of 1644. 

The infamous Jeffreys is remembered here with 
present-day hatred, for at one crossroads just out- 
side of the town he had eighty-four men of Exeter 
and its neighborhood hanged in one week. " It was 
a bad job," said a citizen, with concern and heavy 
anger, as if it were all of last week. But there was 
at least one period when there was no hanging in 
Exeter, for they still tell that, four or five hundred 
years ago, the guild-hall needed a new roof and of how 
the city built a beautiful one by fining, for one year, 
every person convicted of any crime, instead of hang- 
ing anybody — this being back in the delightful old 
days when England hanged for pretty nearly every 
offense, little or big. 

Within the town there is a beautiful park, with an 
exquisite lawn and huge trees, and here the beautiful 
and fragmentary remains of old Rougemont Castle 
are hidden among masses of ivy; and this brought 
to mind Shakespeare's reference to Exeter, showing 
as it does that Exeter has always been a pleasant 
city to visit and that the mayor has always been 
a man of importance; and also it forever fixes 
Rougemont Castle in the memory; for Richard the 
Third is made to say: 

When last I was at Exeter, 

The Mayor in courtesy show'd me the castle, 

And call'd it Rougemont." 

As we were about ready to leave Exeter we saw 
people eagerly pushing into a door in an eager, jos- 



EASTWARD HO ! 133 

tling rush, and as it was under the sign " Restau- 
rant " we joined the rush, and found the most promi- 
nent sign inside to be " American Iced Drinks." It 
was a positively delightful restaurant and they gave 
us coffee deliciously American made and, better than 
all, huge, delicious strawberries of the countryside, 
served with delicious Devon cream; clotted cream, 
they call it, although it is not really clotted at all, 
but delightfully smooth; and it is only fair, in jus- 
tice to Devonshire, to say that we had been intermit- 
tently feasting on strawberries almost, if not quite as 
good, as these, and upon Devon cream, ever since en- 
tering the county; and we left the cream-pots of 
Devon with regret. 

We swung out of Exeter, detouring for Honiton 
under arcaded trees, past little carts, vari-colored, 
remindful of the little carts of Sicily, past dark woods 
distantly massed, past ducks waddling in yellow fuzz 
across the road, past goose girls driving their flocks 
homeward — only they were ducks and not geese, but 
one really cannot say " duckgirl," although, such be- 
ing among the oddities of language, there might be 
reference to one as " ducky "; and here the girls cer- 
tainly added a picturesque touch. 

We met helmeted and goggled motorcyclists, heads 
low down, coats inflated, giving the impression of 
coming charging at us like sea-divers, we noticed 
hedge clippings frugally tied up in bundles to be 
carried to cottages as fuel, we noticed two men stand- 
ing on a big, specially-made platform to saw huge 
logs longitudinally, such slow hand-work methods 
being proudly deemed conservative over here; and 
thus into the broad street of little Honiton. Some- 
thing in its appearance quite astonished us and in a 
moment we noticed what it was : it was the first Eng- 
lish town we had seen, exclusive of cities, without 
greenery, and even the streets of the cities had some- 



134 FOUR ON A TOUR 

how managed to give a greener effect than this. It is 
a town of yellow bareness. 

Down the main street a tiny donkey was drawing 
a tiny cart in which, high-perched, sat a grizzled, 
white-whiskered old farmer in bright blue coat and 
yellow corduroys ; indeed, we came to notice that yel- 
low corduroys are somewhat of a favorite hereabouts. 
A few red-coated soldiers brightened the sallow town, 
giving touches of color, but not a glare, and a little 
band of street musicians were playing oddly excellent 
music with piccolos and banjo. If one were giving 
a formal description of this place, the beginning 
would be not with the yellow coloring and the donkey 
carts and the soldiers, which are the things that 
mainly struck us, but with the making of Honiton 
lace; and this is really a very interesting matter, for 
it is the only English-made bobbin-lace; the manu- 
facture of it was established here perhaps some two 
and a half centuries ago by refugees from Holland, 
and it is still being made in the old-fashioned way; 
and of course there are little places to buy it and little 
upstairs rooms where you will be shown little old 
women doing miracles with fingers jingling bobbins, 
over the pins on their pillows. 

We went on through a beautiful country and came 
to Axminster, a famous name in the making of car- 
pets, although they have not been made here, the 
people will tell you, for the last hundred years, as 
the secret died with the original discoverer of the 
Axminster method. They point out the old stone 
building where he lived and worked; and the reflec- 
tion comes that, although a man of personality may 
not always be able to hand down his own name to 
posterity, he may be able to hand down that of his 
town, as has this carpet-maker, and that the high- 
est aim of all may not be personal fame. 

English towns feel a great local pride in their local 



EASTWARD HO ! 135 

mottoes; a point which is seldom of interest to vis- 
itors, though after we had left Axminster we won- 
dered that we could have done so without thinking 
to inquire what its particular motto was ; for at least, 
as one of us suggested, the Axminsterites would not 
care to have such a motto as that proud one of our 
own Pine Tree flag, " Don't tread on me." 

None of us could quite say why, but we all felt 
vaguely stirred by feeling that we were approaching 
that great stretch of southern England named, with- 
out any definite boundaries, the South Downs: we 
all thought at first that we knew all about the South 
Downs and that they somehow represented English 
history and greatness, but when we tried a mutual 
analysis we discovered that " Southdown mutton " 
marked the extent of our definite ideas. 

But soon there was something that did definitely 
thrill us, for as we motored along high-lying roads 
of rich and lovely views alternately to right and left, 
we now and then caught distant and sparkling views 
of the English Channel to the southward — and the 
Channel thrilled us. 

Our road tunneled through a hill; an unexpected 
thing, this up-to-date novelty in road-making and 
suggestive of the old tunneled road at Posilipo; and 
we climbed long, slow, easy slopes, and we coasted 
easily down long and gliding sweeps, with cattle graz- 
ing peacefully along the roadside. 

Thus far we have said nothing about the national 
plant of England. It has been so astonishing, so 
amazing, that we have wanted to see if there could 
be any place without it. But it really grows every- 
where. And it is the stinging nettle! Every day 
we have seen it and seen it freely, in the corners of 
fields, in the hedges, along the gardens, beside clumps 
of trees, beside the shrubs ; the noxious thing grows 
everywhere; and it grows thickly. Yet we do not 



136 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



remember ever having heard or read of the nettle as 
a frequent growth in England! Such things as the 
primrose and the hawthorn are emphasized, and prop- 
erly enough so, but it is certainly strange, this silence 
in regard to the nettle on the part of natives and vis- 
itors alike. 





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The bishop's garden at Salisbury 




Invading the solitude of Stonehenge 



CHAPTER XIV 

INTO THE SOUTH DOWNS 

AFTER a run of sixty-seven miles, for our stay 
in Exeter had pleasantly shortened our run- 
' ning time, we came in the early twilight to clean 
and prosperous-looking Bridport, and we casually 
noticed that there were things in the shop windows 
as well as in the hotels that were from Cleveland and 
from Pittsburgh! 

We were struck, in this town, by the numerous 
curved, old-fashioned big-bowed windows, giving a 
distinct impression as of a sailor town; although it 
did not seem precisely clear why this should be so, 
and it may have been only from some fancied re- 
semblance to the picturesque cabin-windowed sterns 
of old-fashioned sailing ships. 

And it is really a sailor-town, and, although the sea 
is not actually visible, it is at least not far away, and 
the town is given a port name because it is really a 
port, with a stream leading up from the Channel. 

Bridport, we were surprised to find, is really a 
place of note; one cannot always tell about a town 
any more than about a person whether or not it is 
famous, or, if famous, precisely what for, and the 
distinction of Bridport we found to be that it is, or 
at least was, a world-manufacturing place of fish-nets 
and tennis-nets. Some time ago, also, it actually held 
the monopoly of making the rope for the British navy 
— and probably enough it made a great deal for an- 
other purpose not so much a feature of present-day 
English life as it was not so very long ago. 

137 



138 FOUR ON A TOUR 

We went on towards Dorchester through the cool 
forenoon air; a hilly run of some fifteen miles past 
many hedges white with elderflower; and into one 
we see a weasel go darting, with its sharp little 
scream. We breathe with delight the fine exhila- 
rating air, and we see great stretches of the cool gray 
sea under a white and cloudy sky; and the road- 
builders, as we have noticed in other places, seem to 
have picked the highest pieces of land in sight and 
then run their roads right over them, thus giving 
splendid expanses of view. 

A bleakness comes over the countryside, and the 
few houses that one sees on the Downs are tucked 
deep in protective valleys. A white road winds nar- 
rowly on between green banks and a cool wind comes 
sweeping in and tosses and sways the now blossom- 
less tall hawthorns that thicken the hedges on the 
windy heights; and there are great fields of coarse, 
yellow-blossoming gorse. 

We pass a beautiful stone lodge at the entrance to 
a private estate; the only rich-looking private estate 
that we have seen for a long time, although for so 
much of our journey heretofore rich private estates 
have been omnipresent. We sweep quietly into a 
little village of trim-built stone cottages, with a brook 
beside the road, and the women come running to their 
doors for mail as we honk. 

The country, as in most of England, is well sign- 
posted at the crossroads, but there is a great per- 
verseness about it, for the four signs could be put 
one above the other, instead of all at one height, and 
would thus be vastly more advantageous, for the 
blanketing method of these posts often makes trav- 
elers, because they cannot soon enough read the 
looked-for name, run forward on the wrong road, 
only to back off again. But we forget such things as 
we notice a passing girl carrying two large tin pails 



INTO THE SOUTH DOWNS 139 

labeled plainly with the name of a brand of Chicago 
lard! 

We pass extraordinarily fat, brown cattle on their 
way to market, each with a man on horseback or in 
a cart overseeing a single man on foot; and it all 
seems economically wrong, except that we realize that 
men's labor, after all, is cheap in England, even 
though in the towns and cities the labor unions are 
raising the pay of mechanics, and thus making men 
more worth while. 

Across a great bare stretch we see miles away the 
spires of a city; and, such being the influence of a 
man who is a classic in his own lifetime, we think of 
this distant place as being not so much Dorchester 
as Hardy's town, Casterbridge. 

Our final approach to Casterbridge is through a 
mighty colonnade of elms, with branches overarching 
and interlacing across the road; quite the most strik- 
ing of any of the similar road-arched avenues that we 
have yet seen. 

The name of Dorchester is at once remindful of 
New England, and indeed many early New England 
settlers and sailors went from this vicinity. In fact, 
all this part of England, so we noticed, seems full 
of a subtle and intangible sense of the closeness of 
America, and it pleased us that a delightful Eng- 
lishman in Dorchester told us that a memorial had 
been unveiled only a few weeks before in a town less 
than ten miles from here, in honor of that Endicott 
who was such a figure in early New England history ; 
and it pleased us that the Englishman could quote 
these American lines on Endicott : 

A grave, strong man, who knew no peer 
In the pilgrim land, where he ruled in fear 
Of God, not man, and for good or ill, 
Held his trust with an iron will. " 



140 FOUR ON A TOUR 

Entering the little city we passed by a barracks 
where a regiment of regulars in yellowish green were 
earnestly drilling, not thinking that in a few weeks 
they would be at something very much more than 
drilling on the other side of the Channel. 

We turned aside to a huge Roman amphitheater, 
much the most remarkable of all the Roman remains 
of this region, rich as it is in various mementos of 
this sort. It is a large circular, or rather oval, earth- 
work which would pass at home for excellent work of 
the Mound Builders, and the great banks are about 
thirty-five feet high. Boys were playing cricket in 
the interior of the amphitheater and modern and un- 
attractive little houses have been built close about, 
outside. In the days of Roman dominion the Ro- 
mans used to gather here for the amusement of seeing 
Britons kill wild animals, or each other, and the Eng- 
lish followed this more or less laudable example by 
making the amphitheater a place for public execu- 
tion up to quite recent years; and the people here 
will tell you with a sort of pride that some twelve 
thousand spectators would gather for such an event. 
Without insisting too much upon such things as these, 
it is well to remember how very near civilization is 
to barbarism. 

An exceedingly interesting looking place is Dor- 
chester; and it has a pleasant sort of character with- 
out possessing any particularly notable features. It 
really seems, here, as if the interest in Hardy lessens 
one's interest in other things, and one retains a vivid 
impression of such an intrinsically ordinary scene as 
that of half a dozen heavy grain wagons grouped to- 
gether, each with three horses, just because the mayor 
of Casterbridge was a dealer in grain. We were not 
satisfied until we had identified the window of the 
second-story room of the inn where he was given a 
great dinner. 



INTO THE SOUTH DOWNS 141 

Instantly upon leaving Dorchester we were run- 
ning through a rich parklike, farm-land country: 
these two contradictory phrases both being ap- 
plicable ; and everywhere we noticed many cattle and 
so very many sheep that we were not only quite ready 
to believe the local assertion that there are over three- 
quarters of a million sheep around Dorchester, but 
also felt that all the mutton-chops of England were 
quite accounted for — and we wondered why so often 
there could be only bacon and eggs or 'am! It is one 
of life's mysteries. 

It would seem as if the people of these downs (the 
contour of the land is such as to justify the phrase, 
these ups and downs) must have quite a love for 
color, for we pass a green-bloused girl on a blue 
bicycle, an orange-capped girl walking to school, pur- 
ple schoolbag in hand, and a wagon all blue and red 
and brown and white, with dappled horses wearing 
little white, red-tasseled caps above their ears. We 
enter a little village with pretty blue flowers grow- 
ing in thick clusters beside the doorsteps and with 
gardens a brilliant red with big red poppies, and with 
wattles tied in big bundles beside cottages, and we 
come to Blandford. 

Now, we had anticipated nothing of interest in 
Blandford, and had expected to pass through with- 
out stopping, but, such being the pleasant unexpect- 
edness of travel, it became to us much more than a 
mere catchpoint on a map. 

In the first place, there was a particularly charm- 
ing entrance to the town, past a little stream which 
attractively broadens and is full of waterlilies; and 
at one side is a line of ancient dormer-windowed 
houses and at the other a beautiful entrance to a beau- 
tiful estate; and great trees stand shadingly, in a cen- 
tral cluster. Spots like this are fascinating just be- 
cause of their mere existence. Travelers cannot ask 



142 FOUR ON A TOUR 

everywhere for definite historic interest. Beauty is 
its own excuse for being. 

Blandf ord is a town of red-tiled roofs, mossy-toned 
by age; one thinks of Ruskin's phrase about English 
towns " dressed in red-tiled roofs as our old women 
in red cloaks." The people will tell you that every 
house used to be thatched, but that there were so 
many fires in the town that quite recently, which you 
find to mean two hundred years ago, Parliament for- 
bade Blandf ord having any thatched roofs. (Par- 
liament even to this day meddles in all sorts of Eng- 
lish little affairs, such as are left in other countries 
to local authorities.) For our own part we have thus 
far on this entire journey seen no more than three 
buildings that have been burnt within the past two 
hundred years, and each of them was a garage! 

A pleasant feature of Blandford is its numerous 
ancient and venerable charities; it has quaint alms- 
houses founded over two centuries ago by charitable 
individuals; other individuals long ago left money to 
provide for apprenticing young lads to fishermen, or 
for " binding out " poor girls, or for clothing reputa- 
ble old men and women who have never received 
parish relief and who " are of sober life and conver- 
sation, and constant in attendance at church." But 
most interesting of all is an ancient blue-coat school, 
founded by a certain Archbishop Wake back in the 
seventeenth century, who provided means for edu- 
cating twelve poor boys, who should be taught to 
read, to write and cast accounts, and to receive in- 
struction in the Protestant religion, and who should be 
dressed in the manner of the " blue-coat schools in 
London." 

For so small a number, twelve boys really give 
quite an air to the place, with their quaintly- 
fashioned, round, blue-tasseled caps, their white- 
rabat ties, their mustard-colored stockings, their blue 



INTO THE SOUTH DOWNS 143 

coats coming down to their ankles and their silver 
buttons, on each of which are the words " Archbishop 
Wake's Charity " ; and the boys themselves are a 
frank-faced, manly-looking set. 

All about Blandford is extremely pretty country, 
and as we left the town we were at first misdirected 
for half a mile or so, but it was a delightful misdi- 
rection, for it took us past adorable stretches of a 
great private park, with scores of deer and of little 
dappled fawns, graceful and sweet and wild, scat- 
tered among the huge trees and over the smooth 
green turf. Not every town has both its entrances 
and its exits so felicitous! 

And now we are off for Salisbury, twenty-five 
miles away, and we mount a hill, and in front of us 
a great long-eared hare dashes across the road, 
and unexpectedly great views open for miles and 
miles, with fields curiously crossed by lines of trees, 
and in all these wide-sweeping miles not a single 
house to be seen, although we find as we go onward 
that a few are nooked away in little hollows. 

Only two miles out of Blandford we run through 
tiny Pimperne ; the unexpectedness of interest of this 
little place being that its manorial rights were granted 
by Henry the Eighth to Catherine Howard and aft- 
erward to Katherine Parr, and in each case, so the 
phrase had it — a sinister phrase, considering who was 
the King — the grant was made to the King's wife 
"for life"! 

We passed a wagon heavily loaded with wattle- 
fence made with sharp-pointed stakes, for posts, 
ready to stick in the ground; we passed bleak open 
spaces, unhedged and unwalled from the road, but 
not entirely unusable land like much of the open 
moorland that we have seen, for here and there we 
noticed flocks of sheep grazing. Beautifully crested 
birds and great black-and-white magpies fly here and 



1U FOUR ON A TOUR 

there, and we meet a bright blue wagon with yellow 
cloth ears on the horses, and we smile as we see sign- 
posts marked " Sarum," for they expect even stran- 
gers to know that it means Salisbury. 

We go on and on through the quiet bleakness, and 
with the curiously continued absence of both hedges 
and roadside walls; and the land stretches off level 
on either side of the road and distant heights rise here 
and there ; and frequently one sees some ancient pre- 
historic tumulus and not infrequently there are 
ancient earth rings of a history forever to remain 
unknown. We look far ahead and for miles see the 
road undulating like a white chalk mark across the 
vast bleakness, and after a while we come to where 
there are some farms dotted among the uncultivated 
stretches, and we see a marvelous field with literally 
thousands and thousands of scarlet poppies mingled 
with thousands and thousands of flowers tiny and 
white; a wonderful thing to see. 

And suddenly we see, very far away, what seems 
to be a little spire sticking up through a hole in the 
downs. 







The Itchen, a river of Izaak Walton 




Where Franklin wrote most of his Autobiography; at Twyford 



CHAPTER XV 

THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 

BUT it was not a little spire ; on the contrary, it 
was the very tallest spire in all England. And 
it did not come up from a hole in the downs, 
but rose above Salisbury Cathedral, the city of Salis- 
bury standing on a level much lower than that of the 
road over which we were advancing. 

We turned down a valley road, passing clumps of 
large trees and a few farmers stolidly stooping to 
their work. And we ran into the tiny village of 
Coombe Bassett and the very unexpectedness of the 
place added vastly to its charm. It is a little village 
of ancient houses, weathered to soft colorings, with 
little stone bridges crossing a little stream in little 
arching leaps, and the little stream itself broadening 
out with ducks ideally floating : a village where is the 
very ecstasy of thatched roofing, for even a long stone 
wall is thatched and there is a most immense extent of 
thatched roofed barn. 

Ancient entrance gates, with lichened-stone lions 
couchant upon the tops of ancient lichened-stone 
posts, lead into an ancient private estate* and close 
beside, as if to add a final touch of color, is a great 
field that is an unbroken glow of acres of turnip seed 
in brightest yellow. And from here it was a short run 
into Salisbury. 

Our first impression of Salisbury was of an inn, for 
it was past luncheon-time when we arrived in the city, 
and we came upon an attractive-looking restaurant 
as we motored in, and we stopped, and found the 

145 



146 FOUR ON A TOUR 

most excellent service, with everything clean and ex- 
quisite. In England it is always difficult to get away 
from historical and literary associations, and so we 
found that in this very inn Dickens did some of his 
writing and that Henry Laurens, President of the 
Continental Congress, rested here on his way to Lon- 
don in 1780 — where he was promptly put in the 
Tower and kept there for fifteen months. 

We entered the cathedral grounds through an 
ancient gateway, from the inner side of which there 
was recently taken down a Stuart stone effigy to be 
replaced by one of Edward the Seventh; a rather in- 
congruous and modern touch, but the Stuart effigy 
was also quite out of keeping with this extremely 
beautiful ancient gate, and as the centuries merge 
vaguely together Edward will not seem any worse 
than Charles would have done. 

After going through the gate, we pass along a 
narrow way with ancient houses close to the side- 
walks, and thence step out into an open space — and 
such an open space! For there are enormous elms 
(it took all four of us to span one, fingers to fingers!) 
and ancient great cedars of Lebanon; and there is 
splendid greenery all around the great space and 
there are beautiful old houses with walls and gates 
and ivy, making the very perfection of sheltered pa- 
trician living. Age and culture and history and quiet 
all are here, and in the center of this great space is 
the beautiful cathedral. Yet, although undeniably 
beautiful, you feel that it is not so adorable as is its 
superb setting of great greenery and old buildings 
and perfect gardens. And then, after a while, you 
realize, with some surprise, that your love for the 
exterior of the cathedral is immensely growing upon 
you. 

Our strongest single impression is not of the cathe- 
dral itself, but of the exquisite beauty, the perfect 



THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 147 

repose, the seclusion, of the bishop's private garden 
and home — a very marvel of attractiveness. 

The exterior of Salisbury Cathedral is softened to 
a color of greenish gray, and the fine length of the 
interior is not destroyed by screen or ill-placed organ, 
as is unhappily usual with English cathedrals. 

A cathedral-in-a-hurry, this, for it was all built 
within the space of forty years or so, instead of, as 
with most cathedrals, growing gradually through 
many generations or even centuries. And yet, as one 
of the clergy carefully pointed out to us, it was really 
not all built within forty years, for the spire was not 
built for seventy years! 

A most agreeable town is Salisbury, with delight- 
ful glimpses everywhere through gates and passages 
and into closes ; more than any other, this seems to us 
to be the typical English cathedral town. And it 
seems to grow a kind of sweet-faced young English 
girl that is altogether fine and characteristic. 

Following Salisbury, our next objective was Stone- 
henge, and the road to Stonehenge was a great sur- 
prise; we expected bleakness, but found instead a 
lushness even more than usually rich. Nowhere are 
cattle more sleek ; nowhere do grass and hedges grow 
more full and green; nowhere are there more beau- 
tiful thatched roofs; nowhere is there a more happy 
country ; nowhere are there prettier lanes. The pros- 
perous farms and farmers, the fat chickens, the sleek 
kittens, the great vegetables, the splendid roses, the 
genial well-fed dogs, all unite to mark the contrast 
with the expected bleakness — expected because there 
was so much of bleakness in approaching Salisbury, 
and because Stonehenge itself looms in the fancy as 
the most grim and solemn memorial of ancient days 
in all England. 

It is only ten miles to Stonehenge, and nine and 
a half of the miles are such as we have just described. 



148 FOUR ON A TOUR 

And then comes that last half mile, and suddenly 
there opens out a great drear plain, almost level, but 
with low-rising sweeps. It marks the extreme of 
desolateness, especially in the twilight, with the dis- 
tances growing vaguely dim. The plain is dotted 
with mounds, ancient tumuli, marking where were 
Druid circles ; and there in front of us, under a heavy, 
black and cloudy sky, is Stonehenge. 

A cold dreary wind was blowing; the sun was set- 
ting; it is at such a time that Stonehenge should be 
seen and not in the bright sunlight. Far over on the 
distant right were lines and lines of tents, for regi- 
ments were camping there, but so far away that we 
could scarcely pick out in the gathering gloom their 
pickets and sentries. 

No one has the slightest idea, any more than the 
merest guess, of what Stonehenge means. That it 
antedates all history and that it is supposed to have 
been set up by the Druids is all. But what a stu- 
pendous vagueness this means! And in what a set- 
ting do the stones stand! They are huge monoliths, 
but they seem little in that immensity of bare plain, 
but when you go close to them you find that the 
largest stone stands twenty-two feet in height. A 
few are still topped by other stones as huge, balanced 
horizontally, high in the air. From time to time in 
the course of the centuries some of the stones have 
fallen, and the last, by a remarkable chance, tumbled 
on the first day of this twentieth century. 

One receives at Stonehenge the overtopping im- 
pression of the extent of English history and tradi- 
tion. As one travels up and down the land he finds 
the things of the present day, of the Stuarts and 
Tudors, of the Normans, the Saxons, the early 
British, the Romans ; and here he reaches back to the 
time of the Druids and the vaguest mystery. 

As we finally left Stonehenge the plain was grow- 



THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 149 

ing more dim and more dark, and thus it remains in 
our memory; and we went on our way to Andover, 
where we were to spend the night, busied with 
thoughts of the dim, dim past. A good New Eng- 
land name is Andover; and, indeed, there are many 
good New England names all about, such as Stock- 
bridge, Amesbury and Newton. Next morning, and 
never was there a finer and sweeter morning air, 
we motored on, in the cool forenoon, to ancient 
Winchester. 

The cathedral of Winchester is tucked away with 
quite an effect of casualness, as if the city had tucked 
it into an inside pocket ; and it is often referred to as 
a cathedral built by William of Wykeham, although 
in reality he spent infinite and well-meaning pains in 
spoiling it. But there is enough left in odd corners 
of the interior to show the noble grandeur of the 
original Norman style. Of course it is beautiful, 
although its dignity has been so tampered with ; and, 
after all, such things must be all a matter of com- 
parison; for, as Henry James expressed it, when de- 
scribing slightingly one of the English cathedrals, 
there was so much of beauty in it that if it were in 
America instead of in England, where so many beau- 
tiful cathedrals exist, we should all pilgrimage to it 
on our hands and knees. 

The most interesting memories in Winchester clus- 
ter about the site of William the Conqueror's castle, 
where now there stands an ancient house on the main 
street, bearing the peaceful sign " Tea Room " ; and 
nothing could be less expressive of a great tragedy 
of love that turned to hate. The wife of William the 
Conqueror, Matilda of Flanders, long before he mar- 
ried her, wished to marry a young English nobleman, 
who, as ambassador from Edward the Confessor to 
her father's court, made love to her and then jilted 
her. Years afterward, when she was William's wife 



150 FOUR ON A TOUR 

and William had conquered England, she led him to 
confiscate her perfidious lover's lands and have him 
seized and placed in a dungeon in the castle of Win- 
chester; after which, no place in England was such 
a favorite resort for the fierce Matilda, who loved to 
have great dinners and receive ambassadors and listen 
to minstrels and gossip with the courtiers right over 
the dungeon where her former lover was immured. 
And of course he stayed there till he died, for it was 
seldom in the good old days that the quality of mercy 
was mercifully strained. 

It amused us to see, in Winchester, young women 
motoring in yellow jackets and long trailing purple 
veils, and to notice a shop with the sign " Bootmakers 
to the Gentlemen Commoners of Winchester Col- 
lege " (which, by the way, is really a preparatory 
school), and to see, on this Sunday afternoon, how 
the college boys permeated the walks in their frock 
coats and tall silk hats, and how little boys of some 
other school went about with Eton jackets, big white 
collars, white straw hats with long black strings, and 
very long trousers, and how other young men, in high 
silk hats and cut-away coats and white waistcoats, 
walked by the river's edge. 

It is difficult to take with entire seriousness an 
ecclesiastical city which both casually and calmly 
refers to a principal inn as the " God Begot House." 
The citizens have been doing it for so many genera- 
tions that they have lost all sense of the meaning 
of the words; as a matter of fact, the inn has a very 
ancient lettering over its door, " Ye olde Hostel of 
God Begot " ; and we found it an excellent place for 
luncheon, and we noticed that an amusing and very 
definite desire on the part of the management, to 
manage the guests as well as to manage the inn, did 
not prevent it from being crowded. 

At the edge of Winchester is a fascinating sur- 



THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 151 

vival, an ancient charity still maintained in ancient 
buildings. Far back in 1136 — and how far away that 
is! — provision was made for the complete mainte- 
nance of thirteen poor men and for giving a daily 
dole of ale and bread to wayfarers. And here the 
charity is still continued. 

Far from the main highway we passed through a 
great gate into a quadrangle and on through an 
ancient gatehouse into another quadrangle, delight- 
fully grassy, and one side of this second quadrangle 
is faced with a row of thirteen old houses, each with 
its individual living-rooms, its individual chimney and 
its individual old man. Such picturesque old houses, 
such picturesque old chimneys, such picturesque old 
men! And on the other side of the quadrangle is the 
church of St. Cross, built for the old charity. The 
church was built six hundred and fifty years ago, and 
its marvelous old, round Norman pillars are notable 
for being over three feet more in circumference than 
in height of shaft. 

Though fresh from our luncheon at the Begot 
Hostel, as genuine wayfarers we looked for the dole, 
the horn of ale and the bread, but found that, al- 
though it has been given regularly for eight hundred 
years and is still given, it always skips Sundays, on 
which day it is not dispensed, but dispensed with. 

We were taken about by Brother Gardner, Num- 
ber 12, dressed in ancient costume of long, black, 
full-sleeved cloak and puffy black cloth hat, and then 
the governor of the place took us into his own private 
garden, a high-walled garden, where there were 
myriad and marvelous flowers and a great pool with 
trout and with calla lilies blossoming abundantly, 
with ten flowers to a plant. 

It ought to be added that the old brothers are par- 
ticularly proud of the large silver crosses that they 
wear upon their cloaks. Three or four of these 



152 FOUR ON A TOUR 

crosses, that of Brother Gardner among them, are 
the very crosses that have come down, from one pen- 
sioner to another, since the twelfth century. To 
handle such a cross puts one literally in touch with 
the past. 

After going about as we have in England it seems 
odd to hear people say that there is a lack of uniforms 
and costume there! For here in Winchester alone 
there are a number of distinctive kinds, including 
those of the army, of nurses in blue, of smart maids in 
white at brass-knockered green doors, of queer-hatted 
police, of vergers, of the jacketed schoolboys and the 
tall-hatted youths of the college, of the many clerics 
fluttering about the cathedral close, and of these old 
pensioners, and an order of old men with cloaks of 
garnet — nor does this fully exhaust the Winchester 
list. 

On the whole, it seems as if there cannot be a more 
satisfactory, mellow and altogether delightful bit of 
the ancient past than is here at St. Cross, so finely 
preserved and kept in wise and daily use since within 
less than a century of William the Conqueror. 

Leaving old St. Cross, we were on the road again — 
all Winchester seemed to be out this way taking long, 
Sunday-afternoon strolls — and soon came to the 
River Itchen, a stream deepish, broad, swift-running, 
bordered by rushy banks and so distinctly a brimming 
river that there is not an inch of bank above the level 
of the water. We paused on the bridge and looked 
at this river, so gentle in spite of its volume and swift- 
ness, as it came on past a house and beautiful gardens 
and through a placid region of trees and meadows and 
sunlight, and we looked down into its clear depths 
to its white-chalk bottom and at the water plants 
waving their fernlike leaves below the surface — and 
we were immensely pleased that we actually saw fish ! 
For old, perennially young Izaak Walton loved this 



THE RIDE TO WINCHESTER 153 

river when he lived in Winchester; that wise and 
genial philosopher, the contemporary of Pepys, who 
loved to gaze at " meadows and flowery meads and 
primrose banks " and who could quaintly set down 
that he did not envy the man who had more money 
than himself and finer food and finer clothes, but 
" only the man who caught more fish." After all, his 
book holds an imperishable popularity after all these 
years, and so this sweet full river, so near his home, 
seems full of a sort of philosophic interest. 

Only two or three miles away is Twyford, a sedate 
little village, very attractive and agreeable, ap- 
proached by an attractive and agreeable road ; usually 
sedate, we should say, and usually very quiet in its 
Sabbath calm, but only a moment before we got there 
two motors had tried to pass in the crossroads at the 
village center, in an attempt, apparently, to prove 
that two things could be in the same place at the same 
time, with highly disastrous results to the cars, though 
fortunately not to the individuals, and with a com- 
plete breaking of the usual village quietness. 

We were looking for a house in which, for a time, 
there had lived a far greater philosopher and greater 
man than the great Izaak: we were looking, in fact, 
for a house where Benjamin Franklin lived for a 
time as an honored guest and in which he wrote most 
of his " Autobiography " ; and a house connected with 
such a book and with such an American was cer- 
tainly well worth looking for. And it would be very 
interesting to see at what kind of house he was vis- 
iting, so as to judge as to what kind of intimate Eng- 
lish friends he had made. 

But it was very difficult to find the house ; although 
there could not be a better opportunity to inquire, for 
the entire population had gathered around the dam- 
aged cars. 

The schoolmaster had never heard of Franklin's 



154 FOUR ON A TOUR 

having been at Twyford; the lord of the manor (at 
least we thought of him as that, for he was the chief 
man of the place, to whom they all gave deference) 
had also never heard of our compatriot's having been 
there; others shook their heads dubiously and were 
inclined to think that we were looking for some 
present-day American printer in hiding, and would 
have drawn suspiciously away had it not been for the 
evident concern of their chief man. But at length 
our query was answered, for the lady of the manor, 
appealed to by her husband, promptly pointed out 
the house at the top of the slope down which we had 
just come. " Benjamin Franklin? Oh, yes; he was 
here in Twyford; and that is the house, up there! " 

Directly facing the house, across the narrow road, 
we noticed a great double aisle of huge horse- 
chestnuts casting a romantic and positively awesome 
shade, so dense as to make a darkness beneath the trees 
even in mid-afternoon; but the house where Franklin 
stayed is as bright and cheerful as the facing wood is 
somber. This house would alone show that Franklin 
did credit to himself and his country in making 
friends abroad, for it is a fine, rich and mellow build- 
ing of Georgian brick, with its front delightfully 
faced with ivy and flowering roses. The house is 
really a mansion, with a fine classic doorway, and 
stands inside of an iron gate, nearer the road than is 
usual with such places in England. And we wished 
that Franklin had recorded his impressions of this 
house and of his visit to it; for we found that it was 
the summer home of one of the bishops of the Eng- 
lish Church, Bishop Shipley, who admired Franklin 
so much that he invited him to be his house guest 
here. 



E 



CHAPTER XVI 

ON THE ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 

NTERING a little village in this region, we 
noticed a sign at the side of the road which 
read, 

" Please Slow for School," 



and on leaving the village we were amused to notice 
another sign, reading with cheerful courtesy: 

" Here You Are 
Thank You." 

Leaving Twyford we aimed again for the Channel 
coast, and we followed little-traveled roads through 
charming country, choosing these roads for the sake 
of shortening the distance and at the same time for 
the sheer joy of discovery; they were marked on the 
maps as being of only second- and third-rate quality, 
but from an American standpoint they were perfect ; 
one cannot speak too highly of English roads, and 
one wonders why no English poet has grown lyrical 
over them. 

We went through Wickham, a village with a great 
rectangular space that they call their green — only 
there was no green upon it — and after a while we 
came to Bishop's Waltham, where a huge old ruin 
stands beside a sweet little lake and the highway ; an- 
other of the many New England names, this, and we 
risked a small jest on the intelligent policeman of 
whom we asked a question as to route. We merely 

155 



156 FOUR ON A TOUR 

asked if he were the original Waltham watch; but 
really one should not risk even the mildest pleasantry 
on an Englishman ; he takes it too seriously. ' Yes, 
sir," said the policeman, puzzled but courteous. 
" Yes, sir; thank you very much, sir." 

We merely skirted Portsmouth, for we knew that 
no visitors would be allowed within the naval 
inclosures and that the city has very little to attract 
strangers, except from this standpoint, but it was 
interesting to go on under modern fortifications that 
frowned down from a low hillside and in sight of 
innumerable wireless poles, battleships, hoists, a great 
area of tide-water flats and a huge, old medieval 
castle on an apparent island, standing as a striking 
contrast to the warlike paraphernalia of to-day, and 
as we went on we were constantly meeting and pass- 
ing walkers, for it was Sunday afternoon and the 
army and the navy were out with their sweethearts. 
Wherever we asked as to the road we were told, 
" Stryte on," but never were there more mysterious 
bendings and turnings in what was supposed to be 
a straight road to Chichester. 

Chichester we found to be rather a nice little place, 
with a pile of churchly buildings along the main 
street of the town. Churches and cathedrals that 
are not ruins and are still used are open at almost any 
time to the public, but, although this was toward the 
end of a Sunday afternoon, the cathedral was closed, 
but we readily contented ourselves with looking at 
the isolated bell tower, a structure of much dignity, 
and were vastly more interested in a splendidly im- 
pressive old-time town-cross, which is really a series 
of arches raised like a chapter-house in miniature, 
upon a central pillar; and, a very modern touch, a 
policeman stands beside the old cross to wave motor- 
ists in safety around it, and a Salvation Army band 
was playing in its shadow. 













i 

1 






1 


I IHl . _ 


•j 







ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 157 

In a dozen miles we were at the close-built hillside 
town of Arundel, where stands a huge semi-modern 
castle, the seat of the Roman Catholic Duke of Nor- 
folk, and in the town is a modern Roman Catholic 
church built by the duke as if to show that some- 
thing can still be done by a sect from which all the 
great cathedrals were taken ; and it was certainly curi- 
ous to realize that on this very Sunday we had been 
at a service in Winchester Cathedral where there was 
so pitiful a handful of service-goers as to seem fewer 
in number than the clergy in evidence, and we had 
been at Chichester Cathedral, which was closed, and 
now we were at the Arundel church and it was 
crowded to the doors. 

There was still plenty of daylight and we thought 
we could still make Brighton, but in a few miles a 
heavy twilight that was almost darkness suddenly 
fell. Every pair of lovers in southern England must 
have been walking in the middle of that road, and 
its twists and corners became more numerous than 
ever. 

Then came real darkness and the tail-light of the 
car would not burn; it was a new lamp and the oil 
seemed to have been shaken out ; and we crossed over 
a bridge and were chased by a man for sixpence, not 
having noticed in the dark that it was a toll-bridge, 
and the man went back, panting, with his bit of 
silver, and a policeman called out a friendly warning 
about our light, and a cyclist wheeled by and, leaning 
his hand on the car, friendlily told us that our light 
was out, and friendly voices came from friendly lovers 
to tell us that the light was out; and it was after a 
day's run of just eighty miles that we slipped into 
crowded Shoreham and had to go to hotel after hotel 
before we could find one that had rooms. 

It was an English Sunday night and drinking was 
going busily on all over the town, and in every case 



158 FOUR ON A TOUR 

the drink was served across the bars by young women. 
Even fathers with young daughters went right into 
the drinking shops, and there were more mysterious- 
seeming rooms and entrances than would be deemed 
respectable in America. Our own hotel was just like 
the rest, and the landlady herself helped the young 
woman at the bar, for business was so brisk. 

But next morning the hotel and the landlady and 
everything seemed ultra-quiet and respectable. After 
all, travelers must be ready to make allowances; for, 
other countries, other manners, and it is quite likely 
that things were not nearly so bad as they seemed; 
although such a system cannot exist all over a coun- 
try without being quite bad enough. Next morning 
it was a pleasant little run along the coast to 
Brighton. 

Brighton greatly surprised us. We had antici- 
pated a place of noisy cockneyism, but found it all 
quite reserved and agreeable, with comfortable and 
dignified living in blocks of spacious houses facing 
seaward, and with the great shingly and gravelly but 
sandless beach lined with the funny little bathing 
wagons in which England loves to be wheeled into 
the water, and the water itself gay with little row- 
boats and fishing smacks. The town seems all cream- 
white, as to its buildings, owing largely to the natu- 
ral color of the prevalent building stone and largely 
to paint — and painters are a very real thing in Brigh- 
ton, for leaning against many of the houses we saw 
painters' ladders fully five stories in height, the long- 
est ladders we have ever seen, very slender, and bow- 
ing in the middle by their own weight. There are 
attractive public piers and there are superb roads 
along the waterfront and a long cement walk instead 
of one of boards, and behind the sea-facing houses is 
a great tangle of streets, where there are excellent 
shops for flowers and lace and silver and antiques, 



ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 159 

and where one sees hustling householders and women 
of. landlady types busily buying attractive-looking 
food. 

Nowhere was there anything unpleasant or noisy, 
nowhere did there seem to be meagerness of living, 
everywhere there was absence of nerve-rack; and 
dowagers were placidly looking at the ocean and chil- 
dren with buckets were pleasantly playing along the 
beach and everybody seemed to be happy, although 
nobody seemed to be doing anything in particular; 
and there was now and then the red flash of a sol- 
dier's coat — and red does always look so well beside 
the sea! 

The buildings in Brighton are not very old, but it 
is pleasant to think that large part of them are suffi- 
ciently so to make the place essentially much the same 
Brighton as the Brighton of " The Newcomes " and 
of other well-known English books. 

One of the curious things in England is the way 
in which it loves to attach queer names to decent 
places, and this reflection comes as we motor on and 
into the little seaside village of Rottingdean, where 
Kipling so long lived; and we find his house unex- 
pectedly far back from the sea, with a view into an 
unkempt green, a bare, dirty duck-pond which is 
really an enlarged puddle, and a graveyard. And the 
front gate of the once-while Kipling house was 
boarded tight, because people used to stand and look 
in. A much prettier sight than that of his home was 
that of a cluster of little children doing out-of-door 
wand exercises in the yard of the Rottingdean school- 
house. One wonders how Kipling could have been 
content in such a place after knowing so many places 
more beautiful (including, may Americans be per- 
mitted to say, Vermont?), but the neighborhood does 
have compensations, for in a moment after leaving 
the village a great view of the sea comes in sight and 



160 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of fine cliffs, grassed to their edges, which go drop- 
ping down, all white, to the sea at their base. And 
one remembers that it is Kipling who somewhere 
sings : 

" Nor I don't know which I love the most, 
The Weald, the Marsh, or the White Chalk Coast." 

There are great, bare, hilly downs back of the white 
cliffs, and we went over them in miles of sweeping 
rolls, and we mounted and mounted behind the 
great promontory of Beachy Head up an ascent ex- 
tremely long and solitary, and far down at the left, 
in a hollow in the downs, and set in the middle of 
a sheep farm, was a mullion-windowed house with its 
roofs most picturesquely yellowed with lichens, and 
through a cleft that looked far down on the other side 
was the red city of Eastbourne, set in a low-lying 
plain. 

We noticed as we went through this town a tre- 
mendous number of nurses in costumes; surely 
enough to care for all the sick in England! and we 
saw them always in couples and they all were dressed 
in blue capes to their feet and they all wore blue bon- 
nets with little string-ties. We came afterwards to 
know that such costumed nurses are scattered through 
all England, although not in such profusion as here, 
and have almost wondered whether all of them were 
really nurses or if a good many young women do 
not choose the costume for its fetchingness. For 
where in this healthy-seeming England could so many 
nurses find their sick! 

A traveler is apt to feel, when approaching a spot 
where some tremendous event took place, that there 
should be indications of the tremendous in the land- 
scape and the surroundings, and as we go on to 
Pevensey, the landing-place of William the Con- 



ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 161 

queror, only five miles from Eastbourne, we feel that, 
although there is nothing quite tremendous enough to 
fit such an event, the approach is rather satisfactory 
after all, for as we pass over a long stretch of marshy 
level bordering the sea there come into sight six 
ancient martello towers, all standing detached, and 
all most pictorially to be seen at the same time. 

Pevensey Castle, which marks the place where he 
and his army landed, is now some distance back from 
the waterside, for the sea has widely receded in the 
centuries; it is a great strong- walled ruin, with a 
space of nine acres within its inclosures and with tre- 
mendous walls that are twenty feet in thickness. 
Shortly after landing, William built a castle here, 
using largely the foundations and walls of a Roman 
castle^built on the same spot many centuries before 
his time. Some of William's massive towers still 
remain, and the ruin is bordered by a moat that is 
still full of water, which is thick with rushes and bor- 
dered by lush grass. There is a little village of 
Pevensey, hidden clusteringly against the walls and 
the towers, and there is an ancient and much-used 
right-of-way straight through the castle-ruin. 

Nothing could be more effective, as a final touch 
before we left Pevensey and turned our faces toward 
the battlefield where Normans and Saxons met, than 
to see a noble blue heron rise from beside the moated 
walls and fly, slow, stately and beautiful, across the 
ruins and out over the martello-towered flats. 

The Battle of Hastings was not fought beside the 
ancient little town of Hastings, which is just a few 
miles east of Pevensey, but at a place, known ever 
since that time as Battle, which is something less than 
ten miles in from the seashore. 

We left Pevensey by the long flats over which Wil- 
liam and his army marched in long lines. There 
seems to be a rather general impression that he was 



162 FOUR ON A TOUR 

merely a sort of Norman pirate with a handful of 
men who fought with a smallish body of Saxons, but 
he was really a powerful ruler when he sailed to con- 
quer England and his force numbered well over sixty 
thousand and at the ensuing battle fully thirty thou- 
sand, of both sides, were left dead on the field. 

Leaving the flats we entered a rolling country ; and 
there were scattered houses with roofs of thatch or 
tile, amid great masses of shrubs and greenery and 
mighty trees. We found it a peculiarly rich and pic- 
turesque region; and many of the lichened, mossy 
houses have windows diamond-paned in lead, and 
there seem to be miles of rhododendrons, and there 
are houses clapboarded in wood such as we have seen 
nowhere else in England, such houses as these evi- 
dently having been the pattern from which the early 
clapboarded houses of America were built. 

We passed a private estate at the edge of which 
several large trees had just been cut down and, al- 
though our minds were full of the thoughts of the 
past, we could not but be interested in the frugality 
and skill of present-day forestry, for the wood was 
all carefully piled according to different sizes, large, 
medium and small, and even to the fagots and the 
bark. 

Approaching more nearly to Battle, the trees be- 
came great masses, parklike in character, indicating 
what must have been the general nature of this coun- 
try at the time of the Norman Conquest. 

Unexpectedly we find that the land has been gradu- 
ally rising and that we are now at a very consid- 
erable height, for we suddenly come to a ridge from 
which we can see, eight miles away, the gleaming 
water of the Channel and we know that this is the 
spot where William the Conqueror paused to look 
back at his hundreds of ships dotting the water. But 
we also know that he looked at his ships and thought 



ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 163 

of Normandy for only a brief moment, because in 
front of him was a sight still more profoundly 
interesting. 

What we see, looking ahead from this height, is a 
great valleylike depression, fertile, and now sweet 
and peaceful in the extreme. The Conqueror (but 
he was not, thus far, the Conqueror!) saw this same 
great hollowlike expanse and beyond it he caught 
sight of the troops of Harold, who had hastened from 
their battle with the Danes to meet this Norman in- 
vasion; and he caught through the trees the glinting 
of their armor and arms. 

William had his troops thoroughly in hand and 
promptly descended and attacked the Saxons and the 
Battle of Hastings began. It does not seem to have 
been much of a planned battle, but doubtless such a 
trained soldier as William, a " conqueror born," 
handled his troops with order and care and made it 
much more than a mere onslaught. 

The prosperous little village of Battle arose close 
to the battle-ground. It is a broad and single- 
streeted village which gives suggestions of delightful 
gardens behind its closely-built houses ; and beside the 
village and approached by a spacious esplanade which 
leads to ancient towered entrance gates so admirable 
that one feels that they must really be the most satis- 
factory a*tid adequate entrance gates in England, is 
the place (now a park that is privately owned) where 
the fiercest of the struggle raged and where stands 
as much as Time and restoration have left of the 
great abbey that was built by William the Conqueror 
himself to mark the very spot where King Harold was 
killed. 

' This his w'are the harrow 'it 'Arold hin the hye " 
— as it was put to us by a man who was eager to show 
his local knowledge and did so with an astonishing 
displacement of " h's." 



164 FOUR ON A TOUR 

The grounds are exquisitely kept and the old 
abbey has been swept and garnished and rebuilt into 
a usable mansion of the present day. The old gate- 
house is fascinating, with its great groined arch and 
its gloomy little rooms lit by the cheerful glowing fire 
of the neat courtesying custodian who is not in the 
least depressed by the prison room in this gate-house, 
but on the contrary shows it with pride, as well as 
a hook on which unfortunates used to be pendulously 
suspended. 

We had a particularly charming and very short 
cross-country run of a few miles, picking the country 
lanes almost at random, to ancient Winchelsea. And 
Winchelsea is an adorable town. It is also what the 
English call a " decayed " town, which does not mean 
something disagreeable, but a town intensely pic- 
turesque. It is supposed to have six hundred in- 
habitants, but the inhabitants themselves assure you 
that this is impossible and that it does not have nearly 
so many; yet it is officially a city, with a mayor and 
corporation. This once-while seaport has gone 
through many vicissitudes; it has had hundreds of 
houses sink into the sea, it has had the sea recede, 
leaving a great green plain ; and across this plain we 
looked, from an ancient high-set city gate; for Win- 
chelsea is perched on a hill. 

We arrived at Winchelsea well on in the afternoon, 
with the full expectation of going on farther after 
seeing it. But it so fascinated us that we decided 
to stay overnight; we ordered our dinner at an ex- 
tremely adequate inn and took a leisurely ramble, 
and we rambled about again after dinner and went 
to bed after seeing the fitful flashing of distant 
Dungeness light, and we rambled about again in the 
morning, for it is a town that grows on one. It has 
all the charm of the ancient, with nothing of the dis- 
agreeable, the dilapidated or the squalid. Its ancient 



ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 165 

houses are exquisitely felicitous and the miracle has 
been achieved by newcomers, who have felt bound to 
live here and could not find old houses to buy or rent, 
of building a few delightful modern houses which 
can scarcely be told from the old. The few people 
who get acquainted with this forgotten place love to 
come and live here ; Ellen Terry lived here for years 
in a quaintly ancient house beside the town gate that 
looks off toward the sea. 

The general -tone of the place is one of spacious- 
ness, peace and comfort to a degree unusual in Eng- 
lish towns, and perhaps it should be added that it is 
quiet, well ordered and restful, with nothing what- 
ever of the bustle of town life. It is essentially an 
aristocratic town. 

In whichever direction one walks or wherever one 
looks there is something of picturesqueness or en- 
chantment, and a number of old houses are of the 
wooden clapboards already noticed in this general 
neighborhood; and when we looked at the old brick 
houses we had an odd sensation as of being in Wil- 
liamsburgh, Virginia, and when we looked at the 
wooden ones we thought of Deerfield, Massachusetts, 
the unexpectedly wide and grass-bordered streets of 
Winchelsea aiding much in giving such impressions 
of our own old towns. 

We see anew in Winchelsea that England has color. 
A house of 1720, for example, is of dull red brick 
with black headers, and is built directly on a gray 
sidewalk bordered by a brown road; it has a white 
doorstep and an exquisite white door-frame and its 
window casings are white and there are soft-blowing 
white curtains at the open windows ; an ancient black 
lantern projects from the dark-red brick of a corner 
and the walls of the house are a mellow glory with 
hundreds of roses, white and yellow and red, trained 
close to the wall. Another house has its lower half 



166 FOUR ON A TOUR 

a mass of pale green ivy, and its upper half stuccoed 
a pale cream, and its roof of tile has been lichened 
to a blackish red. 

Everywhere there is so much of the picturesque. 
You see old-time clothes-presses worked with their 
wooden screws ; you see rows of old copper in the clean 
kitchens; you see an old woman tending her little 
shop, just one solitary candle flame lighting up her 
face with Rembrandt-like effect in the darkness ; and 
you see a tiny shop (and this behind the prosaical 
sign of " General Stores ") with moss and flowers 
all over its ancient roof, and with little diamond- 
paned casement windows, and with little dormers and 
long-weathered tile fronting the entire second story 
around little square panes of leaded glass; 1 — and as 
we look back, in memory, at the place we do not re- 
member seeing another shop there! 

The ancient roofed-in fragment of a church is here, 
which, like the Cathedral of Siena, never was com- 
pleted, and the incompleteness of this church indicates 
the catastrophe of the end of prosperity; and along 
the side of the interior lie stone Crusaders sleeping 
through the centuries under ancient fretted canopies 
of stone. 

We have seen few church interiors more impressive. 
The door is left open — no one does wrong in Win- 
chelsea! — and so the church is yours. But you have 
printed permission to drop a coin in a box to aid 
in the care of the building and you are trusted to 
leave a penny or so to pay for the little descriptive 
leaflet of the church. 

This is the only church we have seen in which still 
stands the " family pew " ; a paneled-oak pew, 
shoulder-high in front, higher at the back, set against 
the wall and entered through a high tight door; it is 
lined inside with baize, and has kneeling-chairs and 
footstools and a long seat and, around the inner side 






ROUTE OF THE CONQUEROR 167 

of it, a bench. It is a place in which the " family " 
have been set apart for generations. 

Park gates at the upper end of the town, with per- 
fection of care as to grounds and trees, indicate that 
' families "' are still here, and indeed all the land 
around Winchelsea is owned by rich folk who have 
agreed among themselves to buy any land within the 
town that comes upon the market rather than to 
admit any who might spoil the place. For others as 
well as we have felt the charm of this delectable 
place. 



CHAPTER XVII 

A NEW CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 

AT picturesque Winchelsea we did a very prac- 
tical thing, for all four of us, in the secluded 
'yard of the inn, busied ourselves with pen- 
knives in picking out pieces of flint from the tires ; we 
picked out over thirty and filled the little sharp gashes 
with cement. The roads through this chalk region 
are all of flint, hard but sharp as well, and lack of 
attention would mean ruin for the tires. 

Descending the hill from Winchelsea, always asso- 
ciated in the imagination with the Cinque Ports, we 
motored across two miles of level country that once 
was sea to ancient Rye, which actually was one of the 
Cinque Ports and which is even more a hill town than 
Winchelsea; for Rye stands upon an isolated cone- 
shaped hill to which, as to the hill of Winchelsea, the 
sea used to come up. Rye still has much of its old 
towers, old gates, old houses remaining, and many 
such houses cuddle around the base of the rocky 
height, as well as line the important upper streets. 
Some of the streets are so steep as to be mere passage- 
ways of stone steps, and from one of the low-town 
house-roofs we noticed a literal ladder going straight 
up to the high street of the town! Rye just occupies 
the hill and a skirtlike ruffle around its base. 

Almost immediately after leaving Rye we ran into 
what was called a military road, with frequent toll- 
gates set across it as if to prove that there are actu- 
ally toll-roads in England; we passed three gates, 
each charging a sixpence, in three miles, and the road 

168 



CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 169 

was not particularly good, nor had there been diffi- 
culties in construction. It amused us, too, that with 
a marked distrust of human nature each keeper kept 
his gate actually locked until the money was paid, 
although one keeper did say, in a sort of ashamed 
aside, that his gate was kept locked only to check 
' blawsted motorcycles," but we knew that he 
' blawsted " the motors when the cyclists were there. 
This was the only public road with toll-gates that we 
found in Great Britain, though frequently we found 
toll-bridges and now and then a private toll-road. 

Beyond Rye there are great level farms and pas- 
> tures, with only scattered homes and very little of 
either fencing or hedging. Right across these levels 
runs the level road. The sea breeze comes in fresh 
and clear. There are sheep and cattle grazing. 
There are chickens far from their homes and convoys 
of little ducks. There are dykes and watery ditches. 
And all this is the Walland Marshes. 

Shortly after leaving the Walland Marshes we 
came to a comfortable farmhouse, square-fronted, 
hip-roofed, dormer-windowed, with a garden in front 
inclosed by one of those rare things in England, a 
wooden picket fence, and this place remains in our 
memory as more than merely an old and agreeable- 
looking farmhouse, for it marked the precise point 
at which our speedometer registered one thousand 
miles of run. 

Now and then there was a cluster of houses, and a 
very occasional parish church ; there were broad fields 
that were a sheen of yellow from the blossoms of tur- 
nips that are grown for the sake of their seeds, which 
are used in whiskey making; there were strange 
conical- topped, round towers looking like extin- 
guishers, and they were weather-blurred into beauty, 
and of sufficiently fetching shape, if far enough away, 
to be suggestive of French chateaux, but in reality 



170 FOUR ON A TOUR 

they were only the typical hop-drying towers of this 
region. We passed pollarded willows, and houses 
and barns with queer-framed roofs of thatch or tile, 
and we came to a little village with a mossy old 
church and the queerest of queer windmills ; for wind- 
mills have gradually become a feature of the land- 
scape. 

We are in Kent, and are running through a happy 
region, with picturesqueness, but no misery; we are 
running along a perfect and almost level road, 
through a country extremely rich, and full of the 
memories of those generations of men who made the 
phrase " men of Kent " a synonym for bravery. 
Kent, as one likes to remember, even held sternly 
against the Conqueror for some time after Hastings, 
and it is pleasant to know that one of the towns of 
New England was settled by " three hundred men of 
Kent." 

The houses are attractive and comfortably built, 
and of large size, and we pass one which is particu- 
larly attractive because of the fact that it is still sur- 
rounded by its moat, and it delightfully brings to 
mind the Shakespearean felicity of the " moated 
grange." 

And all at once distant towers, miles away, glori- 
ously show in the morning sun, and they are noble 
and dominating towers, and we know that we are 
looking at the superb towers of Canterbury 
Cathedral ! 

Beside us runs a brimming river ; a phrase that has 
come to fascinate us by its charm and by its perfect 
descriptiveness, and like many another of the brim- 
ming rivers in England it looks as if it would surely 
overflow its banks if there were the slightest shower; 
we pass through great hop fields with myriads of hop 
vines on poles and strings, so contrived as to give 
the vine the full benefit of the sun; but hop fields, 



CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 171 

river, trees, houses and even the city of Canterbury 
itself when we finally come to it, all sink into insig- 
nificance under the dominating influence of the tow- 
ers, which are not only splendid and impressive in 
themselves, but have all the dignity and mystery of 
time and age. 

Close at hand you begin to gather the immensity of 
the mighty structure, one of the greatest and most 
magnificent, as it is, of all the English cathedrals, and 
you marvel at the immense splendor of the carved 
detail and at the same time the might, the majesty, 
the immensity of the building itself, and you wander 
slowly around it, stopping to view it now from this 
point and now from that, and you wander on into 
fascinating cloisters and among ancient buildings and 
gardens and past a particularly fascinating Norman 
porch that is many centuries old, and there comes a 
profound impression of beauty and sweetness as well 
as of the splendid strength that has lasted for ages. 
We are not seeing the cathedral in a hurried and 
formal way, and it is pleasant to wander around in- 
definitely for a time, drinking in to the full the mag- 
nificence of the mighty structure and the fine charm 
of its surroundings, and when we finally come back 
toward the main entrance we notice a point about the 
cathedral which had vaguely impressed us at our first 
nearby glimpse of it, and that is that its general color 
is a sort of rich dull yellow. It is one of the curious 
things about cathedrals that they so differ from one 
another in general coloring, although all are of simi- 
larly time-weathered stone. 

There is nothing in all England that so merges and 
at the same time differentiates the centuries of Eng- 
lish history as does Canterbury Cathedral, and as one 
steps into the twilight of its interior and goes slowly 
up and down its solemn aisles, the impression comes 
of all the centuries united in one grand sweep, and at 



172 FOUR ON A TOUR 

the same time of a long, long line of individual kings 
and archbishops and of their separate times. 

How vivid become some distant great events that 
have almost seemed to be mere figments of fancy. 
Here is the tomb of the archbishop who took the lead 
in raising the huge ransom demanded to free the cap- 
tive Richard Cceur de Lion; and how it brings up the 
perfect story of Blondel, the faithful minstrel, wan- 
dering through Europe until he found the prison 
place of his master and getting into communication 
with him by means of a familiar song! And here is 
the tomb of the great and noble archbishop who, fired 
by the wrongs of the people, took the part of the ill- 
fated Wat Tyler and, as a consequence of thus stand- 
ing bravely against tyranny in tyrannical days, lost 
his head. 

The majesty of the interior of the cathedral is con- 
siderably lessened by the huge stone screen which 
belittles the vista by cutting it in two ; but, even while 
regretting this loss of full glory, no one can avoid 
feeling the impressiveness and beauty and majesty 
of it even as it is. 

Everywhere there is not only beauty, there is not 
only the awesome strength and impressiveness, but 
there is also the constant personal touch which makes 
history alive. 

Here is even the tomb of the Black Prince! And 
there is scarcely a more impressive thing in England. 
Above it hangs the very helmet that he wore, still 
with the long-tailed leopard on its top; here is his 
painted shield, a thing of fascination; here are the 
very gauntlets that he drew upon his hands as he 
advanced upon the field at Poictiers. Nothing more 
marvelous can be imagined in its vivid realization, 
in its vivid making alive of a figure that has always 
seemed part of a misty dream of chivalry. How it 
summons up remembrance of things past! 




A NORMAJT PORCH AT CANTERBURY 



mm 




TWO OF THE CHATEAU-LIKE HOPTOWERS OF KENT 




The ancient Norman castle at Rochester 




Chislehurst, where Napoleon III died 



CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 173 

Notably, in this cathedral, one over and over again 
feels himself in touch with the vivid happenings of 
the ages. It is not merely a mighty place of carved 
and built-up stone, but it is full of the personal life 
of the great events of the past. Why, here is even the 
very spot where Thomas a Becket was murdered ; it is 
not only that one is told that this is the cathedral 
where he met his death, but that, after all these cen- 
turies, you may walk through the very doorway where 
he walked to his death : — you hear the frightened dis- 
suasions of his monks, and you see him go proudly 
and boldly on, and you stand on the spot where he 
fell. 

All this is more than history; it is the visualization 
of history. Ear up on the ceiling, above the altar, is 
a golden crescent; a little thing, not often noticed; 
that tantalizes and fascinates the imagination. For 
no record tells when it was put there, or why, or even 
by whom. But the vague tradition is undoubtedly 
true which links it with Becket as a reminder of his 
Saracen blood and it was doubtless put there by the 
mighty archbishop himself, for none else would have 
dared to place a Saracen symbol honorably over this 
Christian altar. For Becket was the son of a Nor- 
man Crusader who won the love of the daughter of 
a Saracen prince, but she was hidden away from him 
and he returned heartbroken to England, and she es- 
caped and followed him and reached England, know- 
ing only the two words " Becket " and " London " ; 
and it all ended romantically just as a fine, old love 
story ought to end. And how vivid and real it all 
seems in this cathedral, thus forever associated with 
the son of the Saracen woman! 

It is the unhappy fashion of the present time to 
discourage belief in any romantic old tale; it is the 
unhappy fashion to assert that nothing but the barest 
and driest happenings of history could possibly be 



174 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



true; forgetting that life has been rich in romance 
ever since the world was young. 

The crypt of the cathedral is a magnificent maze 
of low dark arches and pillars, and there is a chapel 
in this crypt in which services are still regularly held 
by the descendants of the Huguenots who fled from 
France at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and 
found an asylum here and were given this chapel to 
be forever used by them and their descendants. 

Canterbury is a positively marvelous place in itself, 
holding together within its ancient city walls such a 
vast variety of things of interest; and nothing could 
be said more expressive of the dominating power of 
the cathedral than that it so dwarfs everything else 
that a visitor is likely to leave Canterbury with the 
idea that there really is nothing besides the cathedral 
that is particularly worth while, whereas in reality 
there are charm and interest on every hand. The 
town walls and gates would in themselves draw at- 
tention to any other city; and there are fascinating 
corners, and ancient buildings, and survivals of old- 
time crafts such as that of the Canterbury weavers, 
and there is a baptistry that is itself of sufficient 
beauty to attract visitors from all England, and there 
are even literary associations of unusual interest, for 
Dickens located some of his best scenes in this ancient 
place, and one should never forget that this was the 
town of the author of those fine old lines, " To Lu- 
casta, on going to the wars," ending with that bril- 
liant flash of bravery and sentiment: "I could not 
love thee, Dear, so much, loved I not Honor more." 

Canterbury has all the air of a show place, as if 
the people are not living their own natural lives, 
as in such cathedral towns as Salisbury and Worces- 
ter, but are living lives for visitors; but in spite of 
this one cannot but get a very fine and most satis- 
factory impression of the town, and certainly there 



CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 175 

are ample reason and excuse, if excuse were deemed 
necessary, for this attitude on the part of the people, 
for Canterbury has been a point of pilgrimage for 
countless thousands, during the centuries when every- 
one pilgrimaged, as did Chaucer's immortal creations, 
to worship at the tomb of Becket, and during these 
more recent generations when people have pil- 
grimaged there on account of historical and archi- 
tectural interest. 

But even in such a place as Canterbury motorists 
cannot remain forever, nor even for an entire sum- 
mer; and perhaps a long and continued familiarity 
would begin to weaken the vividly splendid impres- 
sion that comes from a visit of a few hours; and so 
we start on our way again, heading toward London, 
for this is our farthest point east for the entire 
journey. 

We reached Rochester after twenty-five miles of a 
run that is rather featureless, but which is lightened 
and brightened by occasional glimpses of the water 
of the North Sea and of the waters of the Swale. 
In Rochester we scarcely looked at the cathedral, for 
even though we had not just left Canterbury it would 
really demand very little attention. Far more im- 
pressive is the mighty castle ruin, of great extent and 
height, which frowns over the city with immense dig- 
nity; it is really a most satisfactory ruin in its gen- 
eral effectiveness, especially when one realizes that it 
carries the weight of eight hundred years. The city 
of Rochester bought this ruin from its owner and 
preserves it in the center of a public park, where 
babies and seagulls are always walking in the paths. 
The city has also purchased, and preserves as a most 
charming local museum, the old-time Elizabethan 
house which figures as the Nuns' House in " Edwin 
Drood." A particular charm of this house is that, 
although it is not palatial and not depressingly large, 



176 FOUR ON A TOUR 

it is at the same time distinctly not humble; this was 
the fine, large town-house of some well-to-do towns- 
man of the past; there are very few houses like it in 
England and it has a thorough aspect of livability; 
it could be comfortably lived in to-day, with its waxed 
floors, its little window-seats, its paneling, and with 
its numberless little features of interest it is a very 
delightful place, indeed. 

Two miles or so outside of Rochester, and ap- 
proached by a highly unattractive and even de- 
pressing road that leads up a bare black hill and then 
on through a monotonous district, is Gad's Hill, fa- 
mous through its associations with Falstaff and 
Prince Hal, and also famous through Dickens hav- 
ing chosen the spot for his home for the last dozen 
years of his life. 

Facing the brick house which Dickens bought to 
live in, the " grave red-brick house," as he himself 
describes it, and which he supposed to be of the time 
of George the First, is a very unattractive ale-house 
with the very attractive title of the " Sir John Fal- 
staff " ; and, astonishing though it seems, this inn was 
here long before Dickens located at the place, be- 
cause he refers to it himself in describing to a friend 
the home he had bought. 

Clipped lime trees stand before the house, and it 
is separated from the road by a ditch and a high- 
spiked wall with a solid gate. The house is not alto- 
gether unattractive, even though, as Dickens himself 
expresses it, he added to and stuck bits upon it in 
all sorts of ways, and at least it has a hospitable- 
looking entrance and there is somewhat of a pleasant 
impression of elms and corn-fields and greenery in 
the open spaces behind it. 

But that Dickens, when a rich man, able to live 
practically where he pleased, should deliberately 
choose a place approached by a disagreeable road, 



CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 177 

directly in front of an ale-house, seems to indicate 
the possession of qualities that explain why, in spite 
of his marvelous genius, he never attracted the per- 
sonal liking of the people whose personal liking was 
most worth while. 

It is very surprising indeed that this is neither 
London, that he loved, nor the country, of which he 
always felt the charm, nor the seashore, that never 
ceased to appeal to him. That he wrote, while here, 
a book titled by a name almost identical with that 
of the keeper of the Falstaff Inn, Edwin Trood, is 
remindful that he established rather confidential rela- 
tions between his own house and this inn and regu- 
lated the consumption of beer by his servants on a 
plan that was all his own. 

After a run of four or five miles from Gad's Hill, 
we came to Gravesend, on the Thames, the famous 
port of London, a busy place, with Lascars and sol- 
diers giving touches of interest to the prosaic streets. 
We stayed there all night, and from our hotel win- 
dows watched the blue dusk creep over the ship-dotted 
water and red and white and green lights go gleam- 
ing about in the later darkness, and we listened to 
the low swashing of the rising tide; receiving thus a 
quiet sort of an impression for such a busy place, but 
it was probably because we were in the mood for a 
quiet impression, for Gravesend means to Americans 
the place where Pocahontas died. 

And the broad Thames brought memories of the 
far broader and more glorious sweeps of the James, 
and we remembered the place where she and Rolfe 
had made their home. Arid how far away must all 
that have seemed to poor Pocahontas, dying here in 
Gravesend; and how she must have longed for the 
wild freedom of it all! 

She was about to sail from Gravesend when she 
fell sick and died, and she was buried under the 



178 FOUR ON A TOUR 

chancel of an old church to which we motored in the 
morning. The church stands in the midst of a com- 
monplace and even highly unattractive part of the 
town, and has been so altered as to give outwardly- 
little promise of interest, but the interior is plain 
and dignified, and locked in a safe in the church wall 
is kept an old vellum book wrapped in oil-skin, and it 
is reverently taken out and shown to us, and it is the 
original church record of the 1600's; and we looked 
with profound interest at the entry, in old-fashioned 
textlike writing, made at the time of the burial, set- 
ting forth that " Rebecca Wrolfe, wyffe of Thomas 
Wrolfe, a Virginia lady borne," was buried " in ye 
chauncell " on March 21, 1616. 

We followed the road a few miles farther in the 
direction of London and it became so much more an 
unpleasant and uninteresting road as to be worth 
while seeing for the sake of learning how uninter- 
esting London suburban living can be made. And 
this seemed the more surprising because this road 
that we had followed for miles is Watling Street, one 
of the most famous roads in all the world ; a road built 
by the Romans ; a road over which practically every- 
body has traveled: — Julius Caesar himself, the Em- 
peror Hadrian who built the famous Villa, Arthur 
and his knights, King Alfred, William the Conqueror, 
and a long, long line of the great and humble. It 
gives one a curious feeling to think of traveling along 
a road like this, that has been traveled over for so 
many, many centuries, for it so marvelously repre- 
sents antiquity and historical associations. 

Reaching Dartford, which was the home of Wat 
Tyler, we aimed in a general southern way, in a line 
of most agreeable zigzags, through a country rich in 
gardens and in villas, in beautiful contrast to what 
we had just been seeing. We went past the spacious, 
modern home of Chislehurst, where the Emperor 



CANTERBURY PILGRIMAGE 179 

Napoleon the Third died, and where the Empress 
Eugenie lived for many years, and finally came to 
the little village of Sevenoaks (one really cannot help 
thinking of Bret Harte's irreverent " Seven Oaks, 
and then Sennoak, lastly Snook"). Here we mo- 
tored up the long and quiet street and turned off at 
an almost unnoticeable entrance just between two 
village houses, and after a short run down this lane 
came to the entrance gate of Knole House and drove 
through its splendid park, noticing as we passed the 
largest beech in England, the " King Beech," with 
its wonderful twenty-nine feet of circumference, and 
stopped at the front of the superb mansion. 

Rich as England is in noble and stately homes, 
none is superior to Knole. It is the noblest baronial 
house in England; not a fortified or castlelike place, 
but a noble home standing almost unchanged since 
the times of the early Stuarts, and lived in uninter- 
ruptedly to the present day. It is waxed and pol- 
ished and in perfect condition, and furnished with 
priceless portraits of old-time masters of the place, 
by old-time masters of painting such as Van Dyck 
and Lely and Holbein, and it is superb in glorious 
silver and tapestry and furniture of the past. There 
are four acres of house. The building is set extraor- 
dinarily close to the ground, and, although of great 
area, it is of low and felicitous height. The halls, 
the galleries, the bedrooms are models of stately com- 
fort and are exquisite in charm. No other house 
seems to us to express so finely the grand scale of 
English aristocratic living, and at the same time to 
do this with likeableness and lack of ostentation; for 
it has nothing whatever of the arrogance of mere 
wealth, but with quiet restraint and distinction shows 
such things as only wealth can build and gather. 

It is really wonderful that the owner of such a 
noble home and of the exquisite things which it con- 



180 FOUR ON A TOUR 

tains permits the public, three days in the week, for 
the payment of only such a small fee as keeps out the 
merely curious, to walk through these noble rooms 
and halls. 

From Knole House we went by indirect roads, 
through a region of charming villas, to Bromley 
in the close outskirts of London, and there the car 
was left at a garage, whose address had been given 
us some time before, for overhauling and the clean- 
ing out of carbon ; and we took a train for London. 

For it was never part of our intention to motor up 
and down in London. We merely wished to spend 
a few pleasant days there, and we knew that the taxi- 
cab, the motor-bus and the Underground would take 
us about the crowded streets of the crowded city, 
without possible trouble or worry, and with vastly 
more satisfaction than could possibly be attained with 
one's own car. 

Thus far we had been extremely fortunate, in hav- 
ing neither accidents nor delays, and, as one of us 
remarked, we could understand the feelings of the 
man who, falling from a high building, called out to 
a friend at a window that he was " all right so far." 




The old Dutch garden at Hampton Court 







bHHBj . - '.saw 

The level plain of Runnimede 




Houseboats on the Thames 




Seeing the King and Queen at Windsor 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 

WE found to our astonishment that we were, 
within a very few days, willing to leave 
London; that indeed we were glad to leave 
London! It was not that we undervalued its im- 
portance, its greatness, its various and varied inter- 
ests ; it was not that we really wearied of its shops, its 
theaters, its restaurants; nor was it merely because 
we already knew London fairly well, for when one 
comes to know a fine city he is likely to love it the 
more on better and better acquaintance. But we 
were eager to go away from London, because of the 
insistent call of the road, and we found ourselves 
longing again for the fresh, keen air, the bright sun- 
shine, the country lanes and homes, the swift, fine 
motion of travel. And so we took train again to 
Bromley and found the car washed and polished and 
shining like new, and the cylinders cleaned, and 
everything ready for us to start, and we spread our 
rugs and settled our feet beside the bags and drew 
great breaths of contentment to be our own masters 
again and once more on our way. The car gave us 
the feeling as of getting back home! 

From the first moment after leaving Bromley all 
was a pleasure, for we were at once in a region of 
pleasant homes and pleasant living; but it rather 
amused us that for a long time we seemed to be pur- 
sued on our right by the looming glitter of that big 
Crystal Palace, at Sydenham, which was erected over 
a half a century ago and dominates all this section 

181 



182 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of suburban London as a glassy example of bad 
taste. 

We were aiming for Kingston, to cross the river 
there for Hampton Court and Windsor before swing- 
ing northward into splendid central England, and 
there was necessarily a good deal of zigzagging as 
to roads, and more or less of rather ordinary suburban 
life alternating with the finer kind. 

We passed through Wimbledon and just skirted 
Wimbledon Common, which is strangely remindful 
of fine Long Island living — and we gained the im- 
pression that it is much better form to live on the 
Common than in plain Wimbledon — and we came to 
Kingston-on-the-Thames, with its ancient king's 
stone which out-claims that of Scone as to antiquity 
of king-crowning ; and we found Kingston an agree- 
able place, with a very great deal of the very old, but 
most of it was so fresh with paint and prosperity as 
to seem pretty and new, and we found passageways 
with queer, quaint gables, and in a draper's shop, and 
in constant daily use, we came upon an ancient and 
beautiful oak staircase really fit for a palace, and we 
happened upon an " odditorium," a delightful name 
adopted by a very shabby shop in a very narrow lane 
where we found some very attractive bits of old silver 
and china, and we came into a market-square, quaintly 
built about, and notably pretty with masses of flow- 
ers and little baskets of strawberries and green, clean 
vegetables, and so alive with market women and girls, 
as rosy and blossoming as their wares, that marketing 
at such a market could not but be pleasurable. 

For a mile or so we motored along a road, high- 
walled on both sides, to the Lion Gate of Hampton 
Court, and we looked for a place to leave the car, 
and there was no garage in sight, but a friendly po- 
liceman offered to " put an eye on it " for a consid- 
eration accepted but in no way suggested. And 



THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 183 

through the Lion Gate we entered the grounds of 
Hampton Court, and went on by a pleasant walk 
through a remarkable maze, and between avenued 
yews that are huge, fine and venerable. 

There are acres and acres of blooming flowers, in 
every imaginable color and glory, and mighty trees 
carpeted underneath with the greenest of ivy instead 
of with grass, and great stretches of lawn; and near- 
ing the old brick palace are gardens of peculiar per- 
fection, gardens that are the pride and glory of a 
nation of flower lovers, and vistaed avenues stretch 
nobly away from the front of the palace. Planned 
by William and Mary's Dutch gardeners, these ave- 
nues stretch away in the form of a mighty " W," and 
there comes the suggestion that, if we could view 
these from the other direction, we should see them 
as the initial " M." 

The front of the palace, itself built by William, 
is of a soft-colored rosy brick and a buff-gray stone; 
it is of much dignity, but the extensive remains of the 
earlier Tudor portion of Henry the Eighth and Wol- 
sey, also of soft-colored brick and with black headers, 
shows how glorious a brick palace may be when its 
architect is a very artist in building. 

The interior of the palace leaves an impression of 
great courts, of grand staircases, of rooms of oak, 
of Grinling Gibbons festoons, of the grand great 
halls, of the little Wolsey closet with its linen-pattern 
panels, and of myriad paintings of court beauties, 
of maids of honor and maids of dishonor, forever 
smiling and simpering and gay on the walls as they 
were smiling and gay and simpering in these very 
halls and rooms, and there are portraits of roj^alties, 
courtiers, statesmen, lordly nobles and beautiful ladies 
who lived and loved and planned and hoped and in- 
trigued and gossiped in this very palace generations 
ago. The many portraits of the people so associated 



184 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



with this very building and with English history give 
a vividly human touch to it all. It ceases to be merely 
a show-place, with a great extent of rooms open to 
the public, and becomes a veritable bit of the past, 
filled once more with currents of swift-pulsing human 
life. 

And this vivid impression of the past is delight- 
fully added to by seeing veritable old Delft and 
veritable old tapestry and beds and clocks and mir- 
rors still kept in the various rooms in this largest of 
English palaces ; not gathered here for show, all these 
things now so preciously old, but kept in the very 
rooms in which they were placed so long ago, 
direct from the hands of their makers. 

We went through Hampton Court with a friend 
who, living but a few miles away, has come to know 
every nook and corner in the course of years of lov- 
ing visits here, and every bit of its romance and his- 
tory, and with such a companion the entire place 
became vivified indeed. But the motorist cannot re- 
main forever even in such a place of fascination as 
this, and so with a final glance at the charming Tudor 
exterior and a final look at the greenery and a glimpse 
into an odd, little sunken garden which is not Italian 
but Dutch and has little fat Cupids — little Dutch 
loves! — in lead, and birds of clipped box, and a little 
fountain, and a marble lady placed at the far end 
as if to show that even the Dutch could not have a 
sunken garden without something Italian, we are 
on our way again. 

The entrance of a great park known as Bushy Park 
faces the Lion Gate of Hampton Court, and this 
park is open to motors, and it was most agreeable 
to drive in and circle about there for a little, for the 
avenues have been so planned as to make great vistas 
in the manner of France, and there are deer loitering 
sedately about that are surely the tamest deer in all 



THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 185 

the world, and there is a general agreeable impres- 
sion of water and greenery. 

Leaving Bushy Park and Hampton Court, we fol- 
lowed a road along the Thames and soon our minds 
were busied with one of the greatest happenings of 
all history, for we were on our way to where the 
Magna Charta was signed; we were on our way to 
Runnimede. But there was no indication in the land- 
scape itself that we were approaching the place where 
one of the most important events in history took 
place; on the contrary, it was a landscape wonder- 
fully charming and sweet, as if this had always been 
only a land of beauty and romance. And so, as we 
went on our way to Runnimede, the sun was gleam- 
ing upon the water and there were boats in innumer- 
able profusion, and there was the fluttering of gay 
streamers, and overlooking the river there were bal- 
conied houses painted in the gayest of colors, and 
houseboats bright with flowers, and there were gay 
parties out on the water or gathered in groups be- 
neath the trees, and life seemed all joyousness and 
gayety and beauty and charm. 

We came to Runnimede. We tried to visualize the 
scene as it was so many centuries ago, on that June 
day of 1215, when the King and the mighty nobles, 
with their splendid retinues, and the thousands of 
knights and men-at-arms, with all their banners 
bravely spread and all their armor flashing high, were 
here; we tried to picture what a day of pomp and 
glory it was ; what a marvelous hour of crowded life 
when these lonely meadows were literally crowded 
with all that is great and distinguished and powerful 
in England; but the quiet silver river and the 
sweet beauty of the scene made visualization difficult 
indeed. 

Rimnimede is a great level along the riverside, a 
region of sweeping meadows that stretch in their rich 



186 FOUR ON A TOUR 

greenery off to low-rising hills and to woods that go 
gradually thickening into the distances. Here and 
there, almost hidden among the trees and the wild, 
free shrubbery is a pleasure-house by the riverside, 
and an island lies out in the stream. Real living has 
not yet come to Runnimede in all these seven hun- 
dred years ; we see no farmers, no cottagers, but only 
the great level plain, and the river and the bordering 
trees, and hills and sweetness and restfulness and 
charm. 

Few visitors go to Runnimede, because it has not 
been a readily reachable place by rail, and, even more 
than this, it offers no definite sights to see for those 
(and they are the majority of travelers) who must 
be shown an actual city or palace or ruin, or at least 
a fragmentary wall or a gravestone. Now, cities 
and palaces and ruins and walls and even gravestones 
are often extremely worth seeing, but so is the actual 
scene of any great event, and especially when the 
event is very important indeed and when the setting is 
one of beauty and solitude and charm. 

And we marveled anew, as over and over we mar- 
vel, at realizing how much a motorist can see, and 
see easily and adequately, in a single day. To-day 
is to be a very short run indeed, measured in miles, 
but it is a day that in reality carries us through many, 
many centuries and through a vast variety of inter- 
est, for although we started late, through having first 
to get from London back to where the car was wait- 
ing for us, we have since seen the London suburbs, 
and Kingston and Hampton, and now we are at Run- 
nimede, and we are to reach Windsor to spend the 
night; and the delight, the sense of achievement and 
of well-spent time, come not only from the ease and 
swiftness of motion, but because of the utilization of 
every moment; there is no waste of time waiting for 
trains; we stay at a place precisely as long as we 



THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 187 

wish and then, at that very moment, we are off into 
new fields of discovery. 

We suppose that everyone ought to think of Wind- 
sor only as of a great old castle ; and indeed the castle 
is extremely impressive, and especially so when seen 
from the river ; but here at Windsor we noticed again 
that a traveler must needs be at the mercy of his 
own impressions, and so, without either forgetting 
or belittling architecture and history, we shall set 
down that we remember the many beautiful cats of 
Windsor, which probably attracted our attention in 
particular because they have such frequent oppor- 
tunities to look at a king ; and we were hugely pleased 
with the sight of a fine little fox-terrier waiting at 
the lord chamberlain's door — a very attractive 
gentleman-in- waiting indeed! And we remember 
how pleasantly we were impressed by a long, quiet 
stairway of a hundred steps, leading down from the 
castle to a quiet outer postern-door opening in a 
quiet corner of the town, for it gave such a delightful 
impression of the possibilities of old-time romance; 
it was more romantic, so far as that alone was con- 
cerned, than the great open front of the castle could 
possibly be. And it interested us very much, not 
far from the mysterious postern-door, to come upon 
a tablet marking the house where was born Robert 
Keayne, the founder and captain of the Ancient and 
Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, the oldest 
military organization in the United States. And that 
he was born in 1595 is remindful that, in spite of the 
general impression that America is a new country, 
we really ought to consider it an old country, for 
certainly things or persons that date back in England 
as far as 1595 are considered to be of quite an age! 

It surprised us to find that Windsor is quite a 
rough place in the evening, for roughish men and 
brawlers then congregate at the corners and hilarious 



188 FOUR ON A TOUR 

dance-music and dancing and drinking are quite in 
evidence as to sound. We should not much notice 
such things in an ordinary town, but here one ex- 
pects something quite different, in the shadow of this 
immense and ancient and royal castle, still kept up, 
as it is, as a present-day home of royalty. 

Most interesting of the vast and varied buildings 
within the castle walls is ancient St. George's Chapel, 
and it is of very great beauty and impressiveness ; its 
splendid interior, with its fan-shaped vaulting, has 
been unspoiled by time or restoration; and most im- 
pressive of all are the stalls of the Knights of the 
Order of the Garter, with their coats-of-arms and 
banners. We felt a personal interest in the construc- 
tion work in St. George's Chapel because a certain 
Geoffrey Chaucer was appointed by Richard the 
Second to look after this work, and the result of it 
all seems to prove that a poet may understand the 
poetry of architecture. 

There is a most fascinating quadrangle of ancient 
red-brick half-timbered houses, also within the in- 
closing walls of the castle, which are of much pic- 
torial interest, and fine views of the winding river 
valley may be had from the commanding walls and 
battlements. 

On the whole, much though one admires abstractly 
the dignity and immensity of Windsor Castle, most 
of it is markedly lacking in atmosphere, owing largely 
to the tremendous amount of thoroughgoing restora- 
tion that has been done here, which gives an incon- 
gruous and unseemly look of modernity to it. 

But there is splendid and unspoiled impressive- 
ness in the view of the towers and battlements as seen 
from the river; indeed, it is from a boat on the water 
that the best views are to be had. After dinner we 
strolled down to the riverside, and took a rowboat, 
with loose oarlocks and two sets of spoon-oars, and 



THE VALLEY OF THE THAMES 189 

went slowly up the stream in an adorable evening 
light. There are giant elms, and one riverside gar- 
den after another, with stone balustrades, as if from 
a dream or an opera, and with little water-gates; 
and shady willows drooping down over the water, 
to half screen the boats of lovers, of whom there seem 
to be scores out upon this river — and all is quiet and 
happy; it is all of an unreal beauty, with roses and 
white swans and the soft-gleaming water. An eight- 
oared Eton shell, with an anxious, little agitated cox- 
swain in the stern and a bicycle-mounted coach glid- 
ing by on the bank — there is a path on one side — seem 
somehow to be part of the stage-setting of the scene ; 
and just as unreal seem the long one-man shells, 
slender as toothpicks, that skim about like water- 
spiders in the half dusk. Slender girls, poling their 
boats, stand gracefully like gondoliers; and these, 
with the lovers, and the many, many white swans, all 
seem set out upon this watery stage for our delecta- 
tion. Never was a river so satisfactorily used as is 
the Thames; but we realize that thus to use a river 
requires temperament and long twilights. 

Next morning it was cold; one marvels how very 
cold it can be in England in rose-bowered June — 
but it quickly grew warmer under a hot sun. We 
went up to the castle and watched the Coldstream 
Guards come out and drill under the King's win- 
dows, but, though the drill began with snap, it daw- 
dled off into dullness, and more than anything else 
developed into a matter of highly-tailored officers 
walking two by two while the men waited for the next 
orders. " Seems to be a long operation," was the 
watch-snapping remark of a Colonial beside us; but 
the scarlet coats, the blue trousers, red at the seams, 
the great brass chains under the chins, the monstrous 
brown-black shakos, were very pictorial on the great 
green and against the cold gray of the castle. The 



190 FOUR ON A TOUR 

King did not look out at the drill — he had seen such 
drills before. 

This happened to be the day when the King and 
Queen were to drive in Ascot state to the races, and 
we went around to the long Virginia Walk, which 
is an interminable distance of drive, bordered by trees 
and grass, where a scattering of people had gathered 
to see royalty. 

There was a mild flutter as the royal carriage was 
seen advancing from the castle; and we saw that 
" Ascot state " was something very simple indeed. 
The Queen was in white, with her usual make of white 
hat, and the King looked very proper. There were 
four horses to the royal carriage, and two footmen 
up behind as well as postilions riding in front, and 
several high-hatted horsemen rode along followingly. 
Both the King and the Queen had the look such as 
actors have, as of hoping and looking for applause; 
and their faces gleamed with genuine delight when 
^ there was a faint cheering. There was a general look 
about it all, which irresistibly reminded us of the jibe 
about George the Fifth and Mary the other four- 
fifths. 



CHAPTER XIX 

REMOTE FROM TOWNS 

WE motored out of Windsor with a final re- 
minder of romance as we passed the postern- 
gate, and a final touch of beauty as we 
crossed the bridge and took an au revoir glimpse of 
the Thames going on its silver winding way, and we 
went right through long-hatted and short- jacketed 
Eton, a clean and pleasant old place, and passed 
by the famous school, not particularly impressive, 
and were quickly out in the open country. It was 
a region of charming country lanes and lonely, bushy 
greenery, and we followed a few curves and turns 
through this region of shaded beauty, and passed a 
twin-lodged entrance with little classic pillars mak- 
ing a perfect and highly agreeable little impression, 
and stopped near a solitary mossy-bricked cottage 
with Tudor-like chimneys, and followed a footpath — 
for there is no motor or carriage approach whatever 
— through a lych-gate of oak, into the quietest, gen- 
tlest old sleeping God's Acre, lying beside a mossy 
old church of irregular form ; and we are at the church 
of the Elegy, the little country churchyard which 
Gray made immortal. 

Church and churchyard alike are fittingly in the 
midst of a great loneliness. All is so absolutely silent 
that you scarcely hear the twitter of a bird or the 
soft rustle of the wind in the trees that grow thickly 
round about. There are enormous, ancient, dark and 
gloomy yews : indeed, as one looks about, he sees with 
what perfection of itemized detail the poet described 

191 



192 FOUR ON A TOUR 

the spot, for the yew-tree's shade, the turf heaving in 
many a moldering heap, the elms, the ivied tower — 
all is here, and all is as impressive as his words; and 
all the air a solemn stillness holds. 

Most of the graves are little unmarked mounds; 
" for the people are mostly too poor for stones," says 
a countryman who has unobtrusively appeared out of 
nowhere. And these stoneless graves where the rude 
forefathers of the hamlet sleep have been crowded 
thick and close by the centuries. 

Gray himself lies with his forefathers, close to the 
walls of the old church, in a brick, stone-covered tomb 
of table shape, amid the peace and beauty that in his 
lifetime so appealed to him; with the world forgot- 
ten by him, but never by the world to be forgot. 

It is a simple church, without the long-drawn aisles 
and fretted vaults of greater structures ; the walls are 
of brick and rubble-stone, covered with plaster which 
is picturesquely flaking away, and the church has an 
ancient tile roof. That it also has a little spire, mis- 
takenly added to its ivy-mantled tower and deplored 
by every lover of the Elegy and of good looks, is 
something that could be remedied in half a day — by 
taking it off! Why, in this lovely place, has it not 
been done? — for there is none so poor in taste to do 
it reverence. 

Close beside the graveyard is a field that is an un- 
broken glow of scarlet poppies, and adjoining that 
field is one which is all a shimmer of white with 
daisies ; and at some little distance is a huge cenotaph, 
put up by admirers of Gray who wished to build this 
ostentatious memorial but fortunately were not per- 
mitted to do so near the church. 

This country churchyard seems, in its retired lone- 
liness, to be so very far away from everything that 
it seems incredible, when actually at the spot, to 
realize that it is so close to Windsor and only a few 



REMOTE FROM TOWNS 193 

miles from London. And this striking effect of iso- 
lation is the most interesting and vital of the features 
of Stoke Poges. From the churchyard, even the cot- 
tage which we passed on approaching is not to be 
seen, nor is any other habitation of any kind what- 
ever. 

Graj' died in 1771; his poem has already lived 
longer than the United States of America; and one 
cannot but wonder what governments will rise and 
fall while men still murmur his lines. 

Leaving Stoke Poges, we had another rural run 
through narrow leafy lanes; through a sweet, old- 
fashioned England; and at a little cottage in the 
woods we stopped, for there was a little sign of tea, 
and a decent, elderly cottage-woman curtsied a 
welcome and made us tea and brought it out with 
bread and butter. It was a little red-brick cottage 
by the roadside, damp and low-set, but extremely 
pretty, and there was a little white donkey in front, 
upon which the woman's husband was just fastening 
a high saddle, but before he rode away he gravely 
showed us, as we admired his cute little donkey, a 
dark cross-mark upon its back and said, with simple 
and earnest faith, that, " as Scripture teaches," all 
white donkeys have borne such a cross on their backs 
since Christ chose a white donkey upon which to ride 
into Jerusalem. 

We are to-day going along pleasant, shaded high- 
ways as we aim here and there for interesting locali- 
ties that are scarcely reachable except by motor car ; 
and the car does make so simple what were the ardu- 
ous expeditions of other days ; and we come to Burn- 
ham Beeches. We knew them to be the finest beeches 
in England, and expected to see perhaps a dozen 
or so, in a park, and we were therefore not at all 
prepared to find that they cover a great area and are 
an ancient beech forest. There are hundreds of trees 



194 FOUR ON A TOUR 

that are positively immense in size ; ancient,misshapen, 
crooked, gnarled, with now and then a hollow, ancient 
shell that is still alive; and many a small beech-tree 
is growing up among and between the old ones, so 
that, centuries hence, there will still be a great forest 
of Burnham Beeches when the present huge and fan- 
tastic monarchs have fallen. 

There are miles of beautiful roadway leading 
through the shady, shimmering glory of magic green, 
and all the earth beneath the trees is covered with 
emerald moss. All about us in the distances is a 
dusky green darkling as if for Druids and dryads — 
both of which, usually so impossible of conception, 
all at once seem alike in being the natural denizens 
of such a wood. 

It is noteworthy, and something fine and broad, 
that the corporation of London has acquired these 
marvelous woods to safeguard them for the future, 
and maintain them " for the benefit of the people," 
as it is finely worded on a notice that we see at one 
of the forest crossroads. 

From the beech forest we followed indirectly me- 
andering roads, and went down a hillside between 
masses of rhododendron, in full bloom, of so unusual 
a size that they towered for a long distance twenty or 
thirty feet in height above us. 

We swept through broad sweet glades, we rode 
between immense carpets of acres and acres of rich 
ferns, with now and then a cottage or mansion peep- 
ing among the trees, but seldom even so much as this 
of a sign of human life. 

We came to Beaconsfield, reminiscent of Disraeli's 
title, a little place of little houses that seem smaller 
than they really are through the width of the street 
and of the immense open space in the middle of the 
village, and we sped on into more sweeping glades, 
and passed fields yellow and scarlet and white with 



REMOTE FROM TOWNS 195 

flowers, and went beside long hedges thick with wild 
roses or glowing with white elder flowers. We went 
through a tangle of the narrowest imaginable lanes, 
so narrow as scarcely to give sufficient width for even 
a walker to pass us, and at length we came to a lonely 
little meeting-house at a lonely corner of a lonely 
road. And the place was Jordans. 

But the building does not look in the least like a 
meeting-house; it looks like an ancient, lonely farm- 
house with its family graveyard. This appearance is 
increased by the little wooden fence in front of the 
building, by the muslin at one of the windows, by 
flowers along the wall and by smoke coming out of 
the chimney. And the building was really in the very 
long ago a farmhouse, and its interior was opened up 
into a space for meetings, and there are plain wooden 
benches for the worshipers and there is a tiny gal- 
lery, arranged with slides, and the sexton has quaint 
rooms in one end of the building. 

This old Friends' meeting-house, the most famous 
meeting-house of the sect, is a low-built, square-front 
building of dulled red brick, and its broad hip roof 
is covered with dull red tile, and the simple, little 
gravestones just over the fronting fence are mainly 
those of one of the most distinguished men in Ameri- 
can history and members of his family; for William 
Penn is here, and his two wives are here, and quite 
a number of his sons and daughters, including his 
daughter Letitia, who is still remembered in Phila- 
delphia by the name Letitia Street. 

There are great trees close beside the meeting- 
house and the graves; it is peculiarly a place of re- 
pose, of restfulness, of that peace that the Quakers 
so love; and a charming touch is added to it all by 
the flowers that grow closely about ; the honeysuckle, 
the white roses, the fragrant stock. 

Jordans is peculiarly a bygone place that has re- 



196 FOUR ON A TOUR 

tained to the full its spirit and its atmosphere. 
Buried here in this green region of loneliness, the 
simple grave of William Penn, the courtier, the man 
of place and power, the wise and liberal and far- 
seeing founder of the great commonwealth that per- 
petuates his name, is impressive in its austerity. 

There was another interesting place to be searched 
for hereabouts, and that was the cottage in which 
Milton finished " Paradise Lost " and began " Para- 
dise Regained." And the going about in this out- 
of-the-way region, quite away from the main-traveled 
roads, through these rural lanes, unchanged in ap- 
pearance for many generations, choosing our own 
turnings, and finding delight in every road, and com- 
ing happily to the places that we sought, was a series 
of experiences full of a pleasure that would have been 
vastly lessened had we merely been driven prosaically 
by someone who knew the roads. And, we may add, 
short stretches of road through some of this little- 
traveled region have been quite below the usual Eng- 
lish standard; yet this is not set down as criticism, 
but only as a reminder that the road surfaces are 
nearly everywhere of such a superlative quality, even 
through lonely Devon and North Wales, that even 
a brief lapse toward what we are accustomed to at 
home is noticeable. 

Milton left London on account of the Great 
Plague, and this house was described to him as " a 
pretty box " by the friend who found it for him — a 
curious point of attraction to describe to a man who 
had been blind for a dozen years. So Milton himself 
never saw this little brick cottage, with the diamond 
panes in its little windows; he never saw the long, 
straggling village twisting down its long, easy slope 
to his cottage door. The garden beside the cottage 
is now filled with the greatest imaginable enormous 
Oriental poppies, but this is a kind of flower that has 




The scene of Gray's Elegy 




In the heart of the Burnham Beeches 




William Penn's grave at Jordans 




Milton's cottage at Chalfont St. Giles 



REMOTE FROM TOWNS 197 

come in since Milton's time. To this very cottage 
doubtless was sent the five pounds which was the con- 
tract price for which " Paradise Lost " was written. 

The village has lost the rustic quality which it 
doubtless once possessed; but the little, pretty cot- 
tage, with an outside chimney oddly built against 
the front, and a queer little lean-to against the 
farther front corner, and a roof of wavering tile, is 
as pretty as one could anticipate from the romantic- 
seeming name of the place, Chalfont St. Giles. 

From here we ran to Great Missenden and thence 
by a minor but excellent cross-country road through 
a rich farming country and, with one of those fre- 
quent delightful contrasts of the English landscape, 
passed unexpectedly into a woodland with dark and 
profound shade and then suddenly out upon a sunny 
widespread and sweeping view; and before us was 
the market-town of Prince's Risborough, the town of 
the Black Prince. 

We motored entirely about the place, looking for 
its charm, for we had made quite a detour to come 
here because Frank R. Stockton used to consider this 
the most delightful place, in appearance, in England. 
But, though it has a great deal of quaintness, and an 
agreeable mellow old-time air, we see quite clearly 
that if motors had been used in Stockton's time he 
would have found, as we have done, many towns more 
picturesque. Still, it seemed almost worth while to 
come to this village of small, dull quaintness for the 
sake of seeing the sign of a " Baker and Fly 
Proprietor." 

A really fascinating feature of this vicinity is a 
great white cross, cut in the brilliant grass of a white- 
chalk hill overlooking Prince's Risborough, for it not 
only keeps in mind a great battle between the Danes 
and the Saxons, somewhere vaguely in the dark back- 
ward of time, but it delighted us to think that men 



198 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



could go out with shovels and make a striking and 
permanent monument by so simple a means as cut- 
ting off the turf. 

fust a few miles farther along these untraveled 
ways, and we come to the forgotten town of Thame, 
a rather tired-out old village with some interesting 
bits of the sixteenth century; and one likes to re- 
member that this is the village to which Hampden 
rode wounded from the skirmish field of Chalgrove, 
to die, and there is an ancient square-towered church, 
looking as if out of a story-book, with a tilleul path, 
heavy shaded, about it, that must have looked just as 
it does now when this village and the nation were in 
a fever of excitement over Hampden's death. 

From Thame it is a dozen miles or so to Oxford, 
and the old university city is approached through a 
series of rather unattractive modern suburbs that 
give no promise of the fascinating beauty of the 
ancient place. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE HEART OF ENGLAND 

OXFORD is a city of silvery-gray. It is a city 
of buildings fascinating in their beauty and 
with their outlines softly blurred with man- 
tling ivy; a city that gives definite and unforget- 
table recollections of things of serene beauty that will 
remain in the memory as joys forever; a city that 
gives sweetly vague impressions of a broad agglom- 
eration of age and charm. 

We entered the city by the High Street; a street 
of distinction, a street from which one gets enchant- 
ing glimpses of suggested beauty, a famous street, a 
venerable street, a broad street, a street with the 
eye-satisfying, dominating tower of Magdalen at 
one end and a succession of towers and gables and 
glorious facades as we go on to the center of the 
city. 

We sought to renew a delightful impression of 
years ago by living in English lodgings, for Oxford 
is full of them, and we made our way to a secluded 
square and knocked at the door of the house where 
we had lived before. Every house in the square, and 
indeed every house we passed in getting there, seemed 
given over to quiet young men seated on cushions 
on the window-sills, with knees drawn up and deco- 
rously reading in the soft evening light, or if per- 
chance there was one sill without its student, his cush- 
ion was there! By good chance we found we could 
stay at the old place again and we tasted once more 
the pleasures of immaculate perfection of service in 

199 



200 FOUR ON A TOUR 

this Oxford lodging and we thought how shabby 
would be the same place in America after years of 
student boarding. 

We lingered in Oxford, for we loved the place, and 
we went about renewing former experiences and find- 
ing new ones. 

Perhaps the most representative of all the Oxford 
buildings are those of the college of Christ Church, 
with its historical foundation by Cardinal Wolsey, 
with its prodigious bell, Old Tom, which booms sono- 
rously its one hundred and one strokes every even- 
ing at five minutes after nine, with its imposing quad- 
rangle, with its superb fan-vaulted entrance and 
staircase, with its fascinating old kitchen, still used, 
and redolent of roast-beef, and with its ancient oak- 
ceilinged hall, where the students still dine, with 
distinguished Christ Church collegians of the past 
looking down imperturbably from paintings along 
the wall. 

And this points out what makes, after all, the prin- 
cipal interest of Oxford; that, with its beauty, 
serenity and age, it is a city of colleges whose rooms 
and halls continue to be in daily use just as they have 
been in use for centuries. 

Most beautiful of all in Oxford is Magdalen ; and 
its surroundings and quadrangle remain a fine mem- 
ory, and we found ourselves returning once and 
again for the sheer pleasure of walking through its 
cloistered passages and across its fine greenery and in 
looking again at the wonderful beauty of its build- 
ings and its tower. 

There are two green walks in Oxford that are su- 
premely lovely. And one of these is the quiet walk 
beside the Cherwell, and there we saw across the little 
stream a few deer gently browsing, with the tiniest 
of slender-legged, dappled little fawns beside them. 
And the other is the walk through Christ Church 




Magdalex and its greex quadrangle 




The High Street of Oxford 





r*¥ 




IS THE PARK OF BLENHEIM 




In a quiet Broadway 



THE HEART OF ENGLAND 201 

meadows, a great level green along which there is an 
avenue of ancient and tremendous elms. 

With all the sweet and shaded seclusion of Ox- 
ford, and the restfulness that has come with the ages, 
it should be remembered that close against this sweep- 
ing green with its avenued elms, but walled away 
from it so as to be seen only by going down an out- 
side street, is a slum apparently so bad and miserable 
that it would be condemned instantly in any city with 
proper governmental ideas. 

Looking at this queen among college cities, one 
thinks of the lines so long ago applied to another 
beautiful queen; that age cannot wither her nor cus- 
tom stale her infinite variety. And perhaps we 
thought of these lines on a queen because of seeing, 
as we drew up in front of Magdalen tower, the Prince 
of Wales just going away in his touring-car; he being 
a student of Magdalen. " In fact," as one of the 
proctors said as he walked along with us under the 
beautiful tower, " everybody is educated at Oxford — 
or, at least either here or at Cambridge," he added; 
and this led us to make a mental inventory, and it 
seemed to show the astonishing fact that practically 
none of the great names which more than any others 
make up the list of great Englishmen in the minds 
of Americans were educated at either of the great 
universities. Shakespeare, Dickens, Wellington, the 
Marlborough who was first of the name, Scott, Burns, 
Joshua Reynolds, Wedgwood — the list could go 
lengthily on; and point is added to it by the fact 
that Thackeray began at Oxford, but left, and Shel- 
ley began at Cambridge and was expelled. But no 
such reflections could spoil the splendid outward im- 
pressiveness of these old G-othic buildings, nor take 
away from the splendid scholastic air of the place. 

A striking feature of the Oxford of to-day, in 
marked contrast to what it was only a few years 



202 FOUR ON A TOUR 

ago, is the number who are there who are not Eng- 
lishmen; for students are there from many countries, 
including numerous East Indians, and markedly the 
numerous Rhodes scholars from the English Colo- 
nies and from the United States ; and it was interest- 
ing to meet several of the Rhodes scholars, in blazers 
of brilliant hue that bore the arms of their particular 
college, the most fetching being the insignia of Pem- 
broke; and we saw others dashing about the streets 
of the city in hip-length gowns of black mohair 
thrown on, not worn, over their other clothes, just 
like the English. 

But Oxford is far from being an ill-tailored city, 
and we came to know as a common sight what we 
called the trouser-wagons, which were wagons that 
were solidly loaded at the college doors with col- 
legiate trousers to be taken away to be pressed; and 
as we wandered at will, for many of the passages are 
freely opened to the public, through some of the 
colleges in the early morning — which merely means 
between nine and ten o'clock, which seemed to be a 
very early hour indeed for Oxford students — it 
amused us to see rows of morning-polished shoes 
waiting at their doorways, and we passed a room, 
that was really a sort of cell, where the shoe-blacker 
of that college was still busily at work at his morning 
task, surrounded by a shoal of shoes. 

For our final survey of Oxford, for a final and 
farewell impression, we took a comprehensive run 
throughout the entire city: a review of its fetching 
glimpses, its broad views, its waterside and its boat- 
ing, its towers and college fronts and churches, the 
general aspect of Brasenose, Christ Church, Magda- 
len, Pembroke and Corpus Christi, and as we started 
off on our onward journey we were by the vision 
splendid on our way attended. 

We first made a short run to Blenheim, and our 



THE HEART OF ENGLAND 203 

most vivid impression of that place is of poor old 
women creeping miserably along the park roads, not 
even raising their eyes from the ground, and of one 
huddling in her arms a meager bundle of fagots. 

The palace of Blenheim is enormous and ostenta- 
tious, but it is not quite beautiful, not quite stately, 
and in color it is an unfortunate dark gray. It stands 
in the midst of a huge park, containing enormous 
elms and great stretches of rough grass, and grass 
is growing in the very avenue in front of the main 
entrance of the palace; in fact, there is a general air 
of neglect about the entire place. The palace is not 
open to visitors as it used to be, nor are motors al- 
lowed within the park gates, and as it was a hot day 
this meant what turned out to be a blistering walk, 
bare of shade, of a mile or so before we reached the 
palace front. But there is a great deal of beauti- 
ful water in the park, with pictorial swans and an 
old stone bridge, and the memories of Sweet Rosa- 
mond and Woodstock and Walter Scott add their 
charm; and beside the palace is a sunken garden 
which is the very perfection of clipped garden, with 
its clipped peacocks of golden yew and its clipped 
and pillarlike yew bushes and in all a rich effective- 
ness of golden yew and deep-green box, with massed 
roses and hydrangeas in brilliant pinks. 

The village of Woodstock, at the palace gates, a 
long, stone, ancient village, wears a general air of 
depression. It is indeed a village of brooding silence, 
for the shutting of the palace to visitors and its prac- 
tical disuse of late years has stopped the stream of 
travel, and all this seems largely to have done away, 
for the time, with the prosperity of the place. 

At Woodstock we were faced with the question — 
and similar choices frequently faced us, for England 
is so impossibly rich in places of interest — of going 
either to Sulgrave to the northward or Broadway 



204 FOUR ON A TOUR 

much farther to the west. It did not seem possible, 
viewing the entire route, to take in both, and so we 
decided for Broadway, which we had for years wished 
to see, instead of for the place associated with the 
forbears of Washington. We should much have 
liked to see Sulgrave Manor, but we remembered 
that, after all, Washington himself had neither known 
nor cared about the place and had answered, when 
written to by Garter King-at-Arms in regard to his 
ancestry, that the first of his family in Virginia had 
possibly come from Yorkshire or Lancashire, or even 
farther north ; and this partly reconciled us to not see- 
ing Sulgrave. 

And so we chose Broadway. " Broadway " al- 
ways has a good sound to an American! It was 
something like twenty miles away, and we began with 
a superb run, over superb roads, through the richest 
farming country that we have yet seen; a rolling 
country so gently rolling as to be almost level; but, 
in spite of its being so rich a farmland, nettles were 
growing as elsewhere along the roadsides and in the 
corners. 

We passed through a village with the fascinating 
name of Chipping Norton, but with nothing note- 
worthy to remember it by, but, chancing to see that 
the inns of the place were not only a White Hart 
but an impossible Blue Boar, we hopefully looked for 
the Purple Cow! 

Now we go into slightly hilly country and find it 
is a fox-hunting region, and we pass a large pack of 
hounds by the roadside and find that they are the 
hounds of the Warwickshire Hunt. 

A few miles beyond Chipping Norton we stalled 
near the foot of a hill — and found that it was because 
of an inexcusable forgetting of gasoline! — something 
bound to happen once. And with the knowledge that 
we were really stalled there came a vivid realiza- 



THE HEART OF ENGLAND 205 

tion of what we had been frequently noticing, but 
which until now had had nothing of personal appli- 
cation : the fact that one may be very lonely and very 
far, apparently, from human habitation on an Eng- 
lish country road. 

There was enough gasoline to run the car if there 
were a level road to keep the supply level in the tank, 
but in this lonely valley, with a hill in front and one 
behind, we were helpless. 

A half mile up the hill a couple with motorcycle 
and side basket had come to a halt and we wondered if 
they, too, were halted for the same reason as we ; but 
at least they would probably know how near and in 
which direction was the nearest source of supply. 
The two were a thoroughly delightful young Eng- 
lishman and his remarkably pretty wife, and it 
appeared that they had merely stopped for the tight- 
ening of a loosened chain, and instantly the young 
man volunteered to run back the few miles to Chip- 
ping Norton and get gasoline for us — it is sold all 
over England in sealed two-gallon tin cans — and he 
offered this so instantly and cordially that we ac- 
cepted his ready courtesy, and he left his wife with 
us while he was away, and he came back, in a won- 
derfully short time, waving his hand in triumph as 
he approached. Never was help more opportune; 
here was literally a god from the machine ! Tea was 
all ready by the roadside, for we had with us our tiny 
spirit-lamp and some American dainties which we 
had kept in stock for an emergency from a steamer 
basket. We had a gay little tea-party together — 
and not until we were through did we realize that, 
as true English, they had never before tasted clear 
tea without cream. Not until we were parting from 
our new friends did it develop, with some little shy- 
ness, that they were on their wedding journey by 
motorcycle and sidecar. From where we were, they 



206 FOUR ON A TOUR 

were now going on their way to Tewkesbury, and this 
reminded us of the time, which seemed so distant, 
although it was only about two weeks ago, when we 
had ourselves been at Tewkesbury and, knowing that 
we were to be very near it on our northward run, had 
wondered what would happen in between; and of 
the many pleasant things that actually happened in 
the intervening time, this meeting with the delightful 
newly-weds was among the pleasantest. 

Our road led us on our way through towns so 
delightfully named as Moreton-in-the-Marsh and 
Barton-on-the-Heath — both of these old names being 
descriptive, for Barton-on-the-Heath is literally set 
on a heath and Moreton-in-the-Marsh is a very low- 
set town standing on a dead level surrounded by what 
was a great marsh ; and Moreton has a rather curious 
arcaded market-place, which however did not de- 
tain us. 

In a wooded, secluded spot, as we went on, we saw 
a towering Georgian pillar, and it was so unexpected 
in such a place and so suggestive of mystery that we 
backed the car to investigate, and found it was a 
four-shirestone, for it marked the meeting-point 
of Warwickshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and 
Worcestershire. And, like the many states shown 
you from the top of Lookout Mountain, you really 
could not tell one from another, they all looked so 
alike; — and a brown weasel, a stoat as the English 
would call it, that darted away from behind the stone 
evidently did not care in the least in which shire he 
found shelter! 

We climbed up a long hill through a stone-built 
village with mullion windows, where flowers were 
hanging from hilly gardens down over the roadside 
walls, for the cottages were high above the road; it 
was a memorably long hill of little houses and it 
seems to us that this was the first village in which 



THE HEART OF ENGLAND 207 

we climbed up a long hill, it seeming as if all our 
other experiences with village hills were in connection 
with dodging villagers as we went down. 

And now we followed for a few miles along a su- 
perb road, and then swung down a long, long curving 
highway, looking over miles of country that was haz- 
ily veiled with pale, low-hanging mist. There was 
a skurry of rabbits darting off into holes or hedges, 
and the view over the misted country was every mo- 
ment changing, and the hill kept on pleasantly 
lengthening beneath us, and toward its bottom we 
caught a glimpse of white stone houses with red roofs 
among green trees, on a green, green plain; and 
that was Broadway. 

Broadway is famous as being the home of famous 
people who have lived in it for its loveliness and 
seclusion. Poets have chosen it, and artists have 
loved its roof lines and its fascinating stone gables 
and the embowering effects of ivy, yews and roses, 
and actors have spent their months of restfulness 
here. And it is peculiarly a satisfying place, not only 
because it contains so much of the positively pic- 
turesque and beautiful, but also because it contains 
nothing of the ugly or disagreeable. And, although 
some of the houses are simple cottages, others, al- 
though just as unobtrusive, are places of well-to-do 
and comfortable living. A few Americans, in par- 
ticular Mary Anderson and the painter Abbey, long 
lived here, and their love for the place would alone 
make it of interest to their compatriots. 

Of course, we dined on Broadway! Such an op- 
portunity was not lightly to be missed; and we re- 
member that we had strawberries and cream, which 
completed the effect of an excellent dinner as the 
fact of our dining on Broadway completed the effect 
of our visit. 

We left Broadway by way of little nearby Wil- 



208 FOUR ON A TOUR 

lersley, a hamlet with a horse-pond; a little village, 
most agreeable, with the same kind of old houses and 
old windows and great roses that we have been ad- 
miring in Broadway, but as yet unappropriated by 
artistic fashion and very evidently in need of pre- 
liminary cleaning and furbishing before it could be- 
gin to match the immaculateness of Broadway. But 
it pleased us to pick out, in fancy, the house that 
would make the most beautiful home. 

We went on, over a stone-walled road, past iso- 
lated houses with mullioned windows, past a frag- 
ment of a village still retaining its ancient town- 
cross, past exquisite gardens of June flowers, past 
little cottages, as well as the comfortable homes of 
unextravagant prosperity; — and even the little cot- 
tages along this road were seldom poor, but almost 
always not only lovable but livable. 

There were great apple orchards, there were 
thatched roofs with captivating front lines, there was 
a fine, yellow-fronted Georgian house with a notable 
oval-rayed window, there were many cattle and sheep, 
there were delightful hedges and great haystacks, 
there was many and many a pollarded willow, there 
were splendid market-gardens with huge hampers of 
willow to bear the products to market, in a field men 
were shearing sheep in the twilight, and at a cottage 
door a young father was cutting his boy's hair with 
all the delightful simplicity of the round-and-round 
principle. 

We came to where there was a short tearing up of 
the road for repair work, and red flags were out at 
quite a distance from each end of the dig-up, and 
several big, red lanterns were about to be lit for the 
near-coming darkness, and a watchman in a shelter 
was ready for an all-night vigil. 

And there was a tack from a rustic's shoe on this 
road that gave us a puncture, easily repaired ; and it 




A Warwick peacock strutting beside peacocks of box 




The part of Kenilworth associated with Queen Elizabeth 



THE HEART OF ENGLAND 209 

was noteworthy to us as being the very first punc- 
ture on our many hundreds of miles thus far. 

We were close to Stratf ord-on- Avon ; and all at 
once a slender spire appeared as if it had suddenly 
shot up among the trees — and it was the spire of 
Shakespeare's church. And by a bridge over a placid 
stream we motored into the town. 



CHAPTER XXI 

TO FAMOUS PLACES 

WE woke up in the morning in Stratford in 
a room with a wavering oak-polished floor 
and a dear old window with flowers on the 
sill, and went down a stairway with an old tall clock 
at its foot, and had breakfast in an old oak-paneled 
room with beamed ceiling, which we had all to our- 
selves — and a very good breakfast it was — and we 
saw dear little schoolboys, each, with satchel and shin- 
ing morning face, creeping like snail unwillingly to 
school — only, to be accurate, these were hurrying 
brightly along — and we noticed that they all turned 
in through the passageway of an old black-and-white 
building diagonally across from us, which was their 
school: and it came with almost a shock of realiza- 
tion that this was the very building, the very school, 
to which little Will Shakespeare carried his own 
satchel of books, long ago. 

It is remarkable that in regard to a man of whose 
personal life so little is known there should be pre- 
served such memorials of personal interest as are in 
Stratford. The house in which he was born has been 
most resonantly — there is really no other word — re- 
stored, and you follow a resonant voice through the 
rooms. It is rather hard to picture this as the real 
house, and one finds himself almost envying Wash- 
ington Irving, who humorously tells of finding the 
house rather a shabby sort of place, but rich in 
veritable relics, such as the gun with which Shake- 
speare actually shot the deer, the sword he wore when 

210 



TO FAMOUS PLACES 211 

he played Hamlet — or was it the Ghost? — and the 
lantern carried by the real Friar Laurence into the 
tomb of Romeo and Juliet. 

The old half-timbered Edward the Sixth Grammar 
School, where Shakespeare went to school, is a place 
with the genuine spirit of Shakespeare's time. The 
rooms are beamed and braced and primitive, and the 
boys are still taught in the same old rooms, and we 
are told to peek through a little shutter, made for 
visitors, so that their Latin verbs and their mathe- 
matical struggles shall not be disturbed. The very 
hall in which Shakespeare saw his first play is in this 
building; his own father, who was a man of affairs in 
Stratford, is said to have arranged for a band of 
strolling players to come here; and when we passed, 
on our way out to Ann Hathaway's cottage, a stroll- 
ing band of eight musicians, we could almost picture 
ourselves as being in the Stratford of Shakespeare's 
day. And, indeed, the country hereabouts is almost 
altogether just as it was in Shakespeare's time. It 
is the sweet and happy England that he knew. We 
see the same rich fields that he saw, and buttercups 
and daisies still paint the meadows with delight. 

Nothing could be more satisfactorily preserved 
than the cottage of Ann Hathaway; the thatched 
roofed house with tiny dormer windows, and thinnish 
crisscrossing of half-timbering, and adequate, old- 
fashioned garden, full of towering old-fashioned 
flowers and with pathways bordered by low-clipped 
box. 

The cottage, however, is rated somewhat too ex- 
travagantly high, and we understand from our own 
experience just how naturally this has come about, 
for on our former visits to England we found that 
the traveler who goes up and down the country by 
rail, stopping at the various famous places, gets the 
impression that Ann Hathaway's cottage is almost 



212 FOUR ON A TOUR 

the sole survival of the ancient, picturesque cottages, 
whereas, on a motor tour through the country, one 
sees hundreds of such cottages and becomes a con- 
noisseur of their beauty. All of which does make us 
more content to remember that Shakespeare was a 
youth under age when he married the mature Ann. 

When we were about to take a picture of the gar- 
den and house, a pound was immediately demanded 
— or, to be precise, a guinea — for the privilege, and 
we are glad to be able to say that a much more sat- 
isfactory picture than could possibly have been taken 
from within the palings was taken by standing up 
on the seat of the car out in the public road. 

Most important of all the mementos of Shake- 
speare is the church, a large, old, important build- 
ing; not merely a little country church, as one is so 
apt to imagine it; set beside the broad and beauti- 
ful Avon, within the quiet silence of an old and 
ancient churchyard — silence; for one does not deem 
the silence broken by the sweet twittering of thrush 
and blackbird, or even by the pleasant cawing of a 
couple of rooks, and most assuredly not by what 
seemed — but the idea appeared incredible — the notes 
of a nightingale : yet the verger, when asked about it, 
listens, and says, yes, that it is a nightingale, for now 
and then they sometimes sing by daylight here, in the 
latter half of June. And we were glad that we were 
there at so fortunate a time. 

Shakespeare rests so near the altar of the old 
church because he was, by purchase, one of the lay 
rectors of the church, and within the altar-rail because 
the rail was moved outward to preserve his grave 
from being worn by millions of footsteps; and the 
bust above it is within a glass case because it was not 
long ago discovered that it was set so loosely against 
the wall that any vandal could have lassoed it off. 

The church is of a dignified and solemn interior, 



TO FAMOUS PLACES 213 

and across the river from it are great level stretches 
of meadow; and we gained the most satisfactory view 
of all by looking back at it from a point on the same 
side of the river, a short distance away; for the soft- 
moving stream, the bordering meadows and the trees 
dipping their branches in the water, all were so peace- 
ful and agreeable, and the church spire showed so 
sweetly in the watery sunshine — for it had tried to 
rain a little and the air was lightly touched with a 
glimmering mist — that all seemed somehow to be 
subtly suggestive of the best of Shakespeare and of 
the best of all England. 

Through a soft-hued bosky country we went on 
toward Warwick, eight miles away, appreciating to 
the full the rich beauty of the landscape and the 
charm of the green and grassy-bordered highway, 
and the thick clumps of elderflower, and the proces- 
sional elms, with here and there a fine old house; 
such as one, in particular, that we noticed, timbered 
and of soft yellow brick, with an old garden-wall bor- 
dered with foxgloves; and in passing this house we 
caught, through the open window of a room near 
the road, a glimpse of a luncheon table spread with 
old silver dishes and a Georgian silver tea-urn. 

Warwick, the town itself, we found to be quite a 
large place, with houses in themselves of consider- 
able interest and with the long main street lined al- 
most solidly with antique shops and tea-rooms, which, 
although placed in very ancient buildings, did man- 
age to take away from the naturalness of the place. 

We found the town gayly alive with children, for 
it was what they called a " Sunday-school treat " day, 
and numberless charabancs packed with children and 
alive with streamers thronged the flag-hung streets, 
all of which gave a very bright and pleasant air to 
the ancient place. 

One of the old town gates is preserved, islandlike, 



214 FOUR ON A TOUR 

in the heart of main-street traffic, and of course we 
went to see the doddering old houses of the Leicester 
pensioners; quaint-cloaked old men who are pictures 
in themselves and who still inhabit these projecting 
storied houses which seem on the very point of top- 
pling out into the street. 

But one goes to Warwick for Warwick Castle; a 
noble old structure which rises proudly from the 
river, a castle still complete, a castle which is at the 
same time a palace rich in superb masterpieces of 
painting and tapestry and furniture, a castle which 
is still a home that is adequately lived in. 

Tucked away among the noble rooms of this noble 
place is a decorous, ancient private chapel which, so 
they tell you, is the only private chapel still in use 
in England with complement of private chaplain and 
service. 

One leaves Warwick with memories of grandeur 
and great gardens, of mighty halls, of majestic tow- 
ers, of splendid memorials of art and history, of the 
world-famed Warwick vase, that marvelous-shaped 
piece of white marble of Bacchanalian glory, and of 
live peacocks that go strutting beside peacocks clipped 
from box. And for a final impression we motored 
to an old stone bridge, with notably beautiful stone 
balustrades, and from this point looked down the 
brimming Avon and past the great trees, whose 
shadows go reaching down into the water, to the 
splendid castle towers that lift their heads so proudly 
above the greenery, defiant of time. 

In this kind of travel one is always coming upon 
the delightfully unexpected and worth while, and 
in motoring the short five miles from Warwick to 
Kenilworth we came to a great mansion, seen across 
a great pond, and beside the pond was an ancient 
stone flour mill, with its ancient water-wheel still 
clacking and grinding wheat. And here again there 



TO FAMOUS PLACES 215 

is thus the delightful idea of an ancient place still in 
use and not merely kept as a relic. 

Our approach to Kenilworth led us across an un- 
bridged brook that rippled across the road, and one 
gains a delightful impression of old-time days by 
fording a stream on the way to such an ancient place ; 
and it did seem odd to ford a Kenilworth stream with 
a motor car. 

We have found that there are two kinds of places 
particularly worth seeing — the places where every- 
body goes and those where nobody goes: it is ex- 
ceedingly worth while to go to the places where no 
other travelers go, because there is the pleasure of 
novelty and discovery, and to those where everybody 
goes so as not to miss the localities that have been 
famous for generations. Kenilworth is one of the 
worth-while places where everybody goes, and we 
approached the entrance through a deferential dou- 
ble line of self-offering guides and of vendors of 
guide-books and picture postcards, and there was 
seated a little away from these on the green a verita- 
ble Goody-Two- Shoes in red cloak, weathered like a 
tile roof, and a scoop bonnet, and she was surrounded 
with a semicircle of little flat baskets full of straw- 
berries piled in little piles; and just such a cottage 
goody doubtless sat there in the days of Queen 
Elizabeth. 

Kenilworth, long one of the mightiest castles of 
England, still shows ruins of immense extent, and 
the stupendous Norman portion, the oldest of all, 
is still the strongest of all. 

We think of what literature may do for a place; 
for Scott so peopled this castle with human life that 
every visitor goes about speculating just where 
Queen Elizabeth walked, where Amy Robsart was 
hidden away, where Leicester and all the others 
feasted and intrigued. 



216 



FOUR ON A TOUli 



There were only a few people inside the castle 
ruins, not so many in number as the vendors at the 
gate, and each of the few seemed to be plucking a 
sprig of Kenil worth ivy to take home to grow; no 
doubt pretty nearly every visitor has been doing this 
for generations, but still there is enough ivy to hold 
up the walls! 

Everyone who would tour by motor with satisfac- 
tion must learn always to feel a sense of rest, whether 
going rapidly over roads or attentively visiting a 
ruin; he must never let a sense of haste disturb him, 
or considerations of how many miles he must still 
make that day, for thus the principal advantages and 
the keenest pleasures of his travel would be lost : and 
here at Kenilworth, though our stay was not long, 
we found the time adequate to lose ourselves in im- 
pressions of the beauty, the dignity, the grim gran- 
deur, the romance, of these noble square-windowed 
fragments of pale-red stone in their deep-green drap- 
ery. We went down into dungeons, we twisted up 
spiral stairs into towers, we went through great halls 
and pleasant little rooms that must have been delight- 
ful to live in, and we walked over the cushiony turf 
and watched the sheep in the Norman keep. Arid we 
went out past the stately Tudor Gatehouse by which 
we had entered, and thought that it was exactly what 
the Earl of Leicester's part of Kenilworth must have 
looked like. 

Our road onward led us past a picturesque row of 
little old houses, and looking back we saw, what we 
had not before realized, that the castle was built on 
a height. The road from Kenilworth to Coventry is 
said by the English to be one of the two finest roads 
in England, and with typical English humor they 
follow this with the statement that the next best is 
the road from Coventry to Kenilworth! Well, it is 
an extremely fine five-mile stretch, but no better than 



TO FAMOUS PLACES 217 

many other stretches that we have found; however, 
it is much wider than most, and is bordered, as 
Coventry is approached, by superb rows of parallel- 
ing trees. 

Even if Tennyson had not spoken of the three 
spires as marking Coventry, everyone would remem- 
ber the city in just that way. The three old churches 
stand astonishingly near together and one wonders 
why three parish churches could ever have been built 
thus touching each other's elbows. Down in the 
shadow of them is an ancient school where you see 
as pretty a touch of costume as there is in all Eng- 
land ; it is a school for little orphan girls, who are clad 
in a costume of Queen Anne's time: in their bright- 
blue gowns, their long mustard-colored mitts, their 
white chip hats tied under their chins, their little white 
kerchiefs and their silver-buckled shoes, they seem to 
have walked, two and two, from some fascinating 
old print and out under the trees of Coventry. 

There are many narrow old streets in Coventry, 
with quite a number of shabby, ancient houses, but 
it has become quite a manufacturing center and is 
prosperous, and it illustrates the grim truth that pros- 
perity always has poverty in its train, for one sees 
much of dreariness and misery. 

We have so often felt in veritable touch with the 
past, in various places that we have seen, that when 
we entered Coventry and drove down its main street 
and past its notable old guild-hall, we could almost 
believe that we were back in the time of Godiva, for 
every business front was shuttered tight! But the 
Godiva-like shuttering was only, after all, the effect 
of a Thursday-afternoon closing. 

Going on, out of Coventry, we dipped a little south- 
ward by the London road so as to pass through 
Rugby, and we think this was more for the sake of 
" Tom Brown's School Days " than for the sake of 



218 FOUR ON A TOUR 

the school itself; and as we started on our way we 
noticed with interest that there were great fields, 
divided into tiny patches for vegetable gardens, for 
the poor people of Coventry, and it was clear that the 
patches were indefatigably cultivated. The London 
road was another broad highway, and such roads are 
easy to travel by contrast with the prevalent narrow, 
twisting, high-hedged, dangerous, altogether charm- 
ing roads of which we have had so many, many de- 
lightful miles. 

As the daj^s go by each seems more full of inter- 
est than any day before, and we feel that we have be- 
come systematic campaigners. We start as early in 
the morning as we can get breakfast, which is sel- 
dom early, we look forward with anticipation to what 
the day is to bring forth, and when evening ap- 
proaches find that it has always been opulent of 
experiences. 

We remember, as we go on toward Rugby, that 
this is a hunting district, and we notice not only the 
broad road, but the broad spaces of grass between the 
roadway and the hedges and are told that this is a 
peculiarly desirable condition for the hunters and 
horses; and for long distances there was seldom a 
house to be seen, and then it was usually a comfort- 
able and prosperous one, but not extravagantly so. 

Rugby itself is a place with fine, modern school 
buildings, and but little atmosphere, and the typical 
caps of the students are almost foolishly faddish; but 
it was quite Tom Brownish to see some of the lads on 
the cricket-field, and they were a very wholesome set 
of youth and we liked them better than those of Win- 
chester, and on the whole we went out of Rugby with 
a rather pleasant impression in our minds and the 
sound of some particularly fine-toned chimes in our 
ears. 

From here to Market Harborough we had a choice 



TO FAMOUS PLACES 219 

of roads; one we were told was hilly and twisty and 
the other longer but more level, and that it was a 
case of the longer being the shorter, and so we took 
the longer. Hereabouts the roadside and fields are 
much more like those of America than any we have 
seen so far, even to the sight of the chopping up of 
quite a number of large trees. 

Nearing a little place called Lutterworth, we 
swung for a short distance through an avenue that 
was superbly beautiful with overarching trees, and 
we caught glimpses of the mansion of the Earl of 
Denbigh, and then we went on through plainer re- 
gions, with great open fields and with hedges un- 
usually low, and we passed another pack of hounds, 
these in course of being trained and exercised by their 
liveried keepers, and it was interesting to note the 
leashed puppies, their feet still much too big for them, 
supernaturally big-eyed and eager. All this is still 
hunting country, and indeed a fox could be seen over 
these fields for a very long distance. 

We passed one estate whose road fencing was all 
white with every post humorously painted red. And 
over yonder, but a few miles away, was the spot 
where the Cavaliers fought so gallantly but vainly at 
Naseby. 

The rare villages grow comparatively unattractive 
and bare, and at length toward evening we motor 
into a plain and pleasant, thrifty little place called 
Market Harborough, and go up its broad street of 
little, quiet shops, past an exceptionally attractive, 
ancient, little arcaded market-place in the market 
square, and stop at an inn with a remarkably large 
and beautiful old swan sign projecting beyond the 
rows of little bowed windows and out even beyond the 
sidewalk. We so fell in love with this old wrought- 
iron sign that we naturally expressed our admiration 
to the innkeeper, whereupon we learned that local 



220 FOUR ON A TOUR 

pride has it that it is the finest old wrought-iron sign 
in England! 

And this inn had, as we noticed, what we have so 
often noticed to be a feature of old inns of England, 
for it had within it a large quantity of antique furni- 
ture, really in daily use as furniture and not put there 
for show. It would be amazing if a full inventory 
could be taken of the old tables and chairs and tall 
clocks and chests of drawers and settees and side- 
boards and china and tea-urns and wine-coolers of 
even such old inns as we have already been in on this 
journey, for the total would furnish forth the cargo 
of many a Mayflower, even if each one carried as 
much old furniture as that single ship did if every- 
thing known as a Mayflower relic were veritable. 

The coach-yard of the inn was cobble-stoned and 
lined with brick walls with entrances that seemed to 
lead into all sorts of coach houses, stables and serv- 
ants' quarters ; a long and narrow yard it was, with its 
entrance under the building itself, and far off at the 
other end a gateway into a surprising walled garden, 
where potatoes and asparagus were growing thick 
and rich, bordered round and round by profusely 
growing wall-roses, which made what would have 
been a prosaic garden into a veritable place of 
beauty. And in the morning, after the very reason- 
able bill had been presented and we were ready to 
start, a pretty maid handed to each of us a bunch of 
exquisite roses. 



CHAPTER XXII 

TO FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 

AS we went off through a pleasant rolling coun- 
try, a silvery mist lay lightly on the nearby 
fields and delicately hid the distances. We 
went through a charming little thatch-roofed village 
with all the thatch silvered mistily, and here and 
there, as we went farther on, a silver spire showed 
dimly. We passed a solitary yellow house, with its 
front remarkably espaliered with abundant white 
roses, and went on over a high and almost level road 
through fields and trees grouped casually but as if 
with park-planned effect. A colt was prancing be- 
side its mother. A clump of deer ran in delicate un- 
expectedness across a delicate glade, appearing out 
of mystery and instantly vanishing into mystery 
again. There came a fine fresh breeze that curiously 
did not blow away the mist. We passed by stone 
walls gray with mosses, and hedges that were all of 
a wild-rose glow, and a village was casually seen, 
that was almost hidden in the curious English fashion 
that so often puts towns and villages quite away from 
the highways. It was odd, hereabouts, to see farm- 
ers plowing with two horses tandem and harrowing 
with three horses tandem; and it was pretty to see 
blood-red poppies scattered over fields of grain. 
Then with entire unexpectedness a blast furnace was 
in view, with fire flaming up and the smoke rising 
high and straight in tall columns, and yet we were 
now in a village that still had many a thatched roof 
and many a flower-garden and blossoming rose. In 

221 



222 FOUR ON A TOUR 

all, the experience made a striking contrast between 
lonely attractiveness and conspicuous industry. 

In the village were little shops with signs of 
" Penny Monster," which, we may remark, is only 
a sweetie for children, and there were boys and girls 
doing gymnastic exercises outdoors under their 
teacher, and in a few minutes we were out in the 
country again and running through a fine farmland, 
with now and then sheep or cattle or a man driving 
a two-wheeled cart, or a youth on a bicycle — although 
it would be just about as likely in England to be an 
old man on a bicycle as a youth. 

We continued through miles of rural picturesque- 
ness and we came to a positively magnificent double 
avenue of trees leading to some great house ; " Biggin 
'All " we were told it was, by a man with a high- 
heaped load of wood drawn by horses with enormous 
feet and a bushel of shag at each fetlock, a type of 
draught-horse that is very common in England. We 
came to little Oundle, one of the host of overlooked 
and interesting little places, a fine little town, with 
houses of old gray stone and roofs of stone slabs that 
were a little darker, and some of the houses were 
extremely attractive. 

And there was a curious old inn here, the Talbot, 
built when King James ordered the castle of 
Fotheringay razed, and largely constructed out of 
Fotheringay material. The windows of the ban- 
queting hall are here, and two stories of a superb 
old stairway of black oak, up and down which Mary 
Queen of Scots must have walked, and there is also 
paneling from Fotheringay, and tradition has it, and 
there is nothing unlikely about it, that a swinging 
gate in the balusters at the head of the stair was 
walked through by the ill-fated Mary on her way to 
execution. 

It is a most curious thing that so much of van- 



FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 228 

ished Fotheringay is thus preserved in this hotel, and 
it was by the merest chance that we heard of it. 

Less than four miles away we found the site of 
Fotheringay; the place where came to an end the 
career of one of the most beautiful and attractive 
women of history; a queen whose memory is cher- 
ished with romantic interest by the world; and never 
was there a more complete destruction than that 
wreaked by James on the place where his mother was 
executed. Literally not one stone remains upon an- 
other ; more than this, literally only one stone remains 
at all, and that is inclosed within an iron rail to mark 
the very spot of Mary's death. 

An abrupt knoll by the side of a quiet stream, with 
densely verdant meadows stretching off on the farther 
side, is where the castle stood. A queer, little yellow 
flower, locally named eggs-and-bacon and remindful 
of our own butter-and-eggs, grows freely on the 
knoll; and we disturbed a colony of enormous bees 
there; and the only forget-me-nots that we have so 
far noticed growing wild in England were growing 
by the waterside; and wild ducks were swimming 
about and there were elderflowers and enormous old 
thorn trees, and great rushes swayed gently at the 
edge of the stream ; and there was a sense of complete 
isolation, of loneliness, although we saw the peace- 
ful little village of Fotheringay near by with its roofs 
showing among the trees, and although a little above 
the roofs rose the tower of a large and extremely 
beautiful church, which was old even when Queen 
Mary was here, and from the top of which there used 
nightly to shine a lantern to guide travelers through 
the defiles of an enormous forest that was hereabouts. 
It is not altogether fancy that a sense of tragedy 
pervades the whole place, village and all. 

Mary was allowed to go out at times under guard, 
and she must certainly have crossed an arching old 



224 FOUR ON A TOUR 

bridge that we see from the castle site, and one fan- 
cies that it was there that Queen Elizabeth watched 
her; for an old tradition, firmly believed, has it that 
Elizabeth wished to see personally her royal rival, at 
length in her power, and went in disguise and waited 
on a roadside not far from Fotheringay to see Mary 
pass. 

Leaving Fotheringay, we followed roads that 
showed us we were in a once marshy region, and we 
noticed a long footpath causeway for flood-time and 
then were off for Peterborough, on the road over 
which Queen Mary must have been carried for her 
burial there, to remain until her son became king and 
carried her body to Westminster. 

We entered the city of Peterborough over a grade 
crossing, the seventh grade crossing we have crossed 
to-day, into an unattractive part of the city, and went 
on into an ordinary every-day part, with no sign of 
age or beauty or interest; so far it was a less than 
ordinary modern town ; and then we came to an open 
square, on one side of which was an ancient little 
market building with open arches, and facing it was 
an ancient gateway of crumbling stone, and we drove 
through this narrow ancient gateway and were at the 
front of a superb cathedral, with three great recessed 
arches across its squarish front and little pointed 
towers above. Unexpected, after such a facade, was 
the effect of the Norman rounded arches in the 
interior; and it impressed us as a cathedral of great 
dignity, although it possesses a timber roof. 

Katherine of Aragon, after her divorce, lived out 
her life near Peterborough, and is buried in this 
cathedral, but her monument is interesting rather 
than historic, as it was built long after her day by 
contributions from all the Katherines in England. 

We left Peterborough across great levels of ditches 
and drained farmland, with now and then a pictur- 



FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 225 

esque home surrounded by tall trees, and came to 
Crowland, another example of the interest that may 
be found in places one never heard of. 

In the center of the unprosperous, shrunken little 
place is a most remarkable bridge, to which the word 
" unique " most certainly applies. It is a triangular 
bridge, and has three fronts, and three ways over it, 
and three ways under it. Originally, water ran be- 
neath, but now there is dry roadway there. It is 
a curious bridge, and a thousand years old, they say, 
and the three roads that rise to a height in the center 
are to such an extent just stone stairs that the local 
belief is strong that only foot passengers could ever 
have crossed. It seemed to us, however, that an agile 
saddle-horse or pack-horse would be quite equal to 
it. Israel Putnam would certainly not have balked 
at it! Now, sitting there in the middle of the dry 
highway with its three separate roads meeting at the 
top of it, the bridge is a most astonishing and mys- 
terious thing. 

Away up, quite at the far end of the place, is the 
very ancient Abbey of Crowland, facing down the 
road back into the village. The abbey has sadly 
fallen to decay, and the sinking of the fenny ground 
beneath it makes it tip threateningly toward one side ; 
and in niches upon its tipping, ruinous facade little 
ancient stone saints still stand with a very tragic and 
saddening effect. 

Several dry-looking and very ancient old men, each 
with a fringe of white whiskers, were leaning on their 
sticks and intently watching us. Their age and de- 
crepitude seemed characteristic of the village, and it 
was a pleasure to see how readily they responded to 
an invitation to step inside of the building against 
which they were sunning themselves as they watched 
us. " We are all over seventy-six," said one, his hand 
shaking as he lifted his glass: and the tavern-keeper 



226 FOUR ON A TOUR 

joined in with: " If you'd only let me know, I'd 'ave 
'ad twenty-five of 'em in 'ere, all over eighty! " 

Leaving Crowland, we ran for twenty-five miles 
over a level land, much of the time on a dykelike road 
and with neither fences nor hedges but with ditches 
instead, and with the fields dotted with cattle, for 
this is all a fen country and much of it has been re- 
claimed from the sea; the great North Sea inlet 
known as the Wash cutting into the country on our 
right. We noticed that the region was much like 
Holland, and naturally enough, for Hollanders long 
ago drained these fens; and then we thought of 
America when we saw women and girls wearing close- 
fitting white sunbonnets such as were assuredly the 
originals of the sunbonnets of New England; and 
we went through Pinchbeck, which looked plain and 
substantial and not at all as if justif}ang its name! — 
and through little Surfleet, noticeable only for an 
amazingly out-of-perpendicular church tower: "but 
the foundations stopped settling hundreds of years 
ago," said a villager contentedly. 

On this fen-land run we saw so many old churches 
of a type that would go fittingly in American cities, 
admirable and even beautiful churches, quite possible 
in size and cost for reproduction, that it seemed a 
pity that American architects do not oftener follow 
them; and at length, rising high over the fen coun- 
try, there came in sight a tall and beautiful tower, 
and we could not but feel thrilled, as Americans, for 
we were looking at the tower of Boston, the home of 
the Pilgrim Fathers. 

We came to the edge of the city by crossing our 
fourteenth railroad grade crossing for the day's run 
of just over seventy miles ("no grade crossings in 
England!"), and went into Boston, naturally 
enough, past a sort of Back Bay, with boats that 
were stranded in the mud ; a tidal river runs through 



FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 227 

Boston and the tide rises very high and runs out very- 
low. And we found an excellent hotel, with a view 
of river and church; and it is really worth while say- 
ing that we had an adequate and complete dinner, 
with no makeshif t of ham or even chop ! 

We walked about Boston in the evening; it is al- 
ways such a pleasure to gain one's impression of a 
place on the evening of arrival ; and we had the curi- 
ous feeling of having been there before or at least as 
if the city belonged to us. 

Service was going on in the old church, St. Botolph's, 
and the dim lights and the organ music and the sing- 
ing were finely effective. We stood beneath the high- 
groined roof of the tower, which rose one hundred 
and forty feet sheer above us, and, although in that 
light we could not see details, there was a curiously 
strong impression of age and extreme beauty in the 
towered dimness. 

We spent the next forenoon in Boston and found 
it, naturally, a place full of interest, although most 
of the very old buildings have gone. The beautiful 
church tower, strongly remindful of that of Antwerp, 
dominates everything; and how the Pilgrims must 
have realized what they were giving up as they left 
behind them what was even then a flourishing city 
and caught the last glimpse of this old tower! Al- 
though the early leaders went first to Holland and 
thence to America, at least nine hundred in all went 
directly from this city, and the old place must have 
sorely felt the drain. 

Next to the church, the most interesting old build- 
ing is the guild-hall, a fascinating old building with 
some exquisite remains of linen-pattern doors and 
paneling, and with a fine hall, and the great old-time 
kitchens with ancient fireplaces and great iron kettles 
and iron trivets; and we see the very room in which 
some of the Pilgrim Fathers were tried and the dark 



228 FOUR ON A TOUR 

cells in which they were imprisoned. One under- 
stands why these men led a pilgrimage to found a 
newer Boston! 

It is a city of fascinating impressions for any 
American. It is now a very quiet place, and the 
very warehouses along the waterfront — the city be- 
ing four or five miles from the Wash — are suggestive 
of New England ; and down in this warehouse district 
is the home of Jean Ingelow, a large Georgian house 
with squat dormers; and one suddenly realizes that 
this is the Boston of her verse, and that the soft-toned 
bells to which we have listened are the bells that rang 
the " Brides of Enderby " in that terrible time of 
flood when the seawall broke. 

In the pleasant, open market-place of Boston, 
bright with flowers and fresh fruits — good markets 
are a tradition of the American Boston! — we had our 
only collision of the entire journey; and it was not 
precisely a collision at that; for our car was stand- 
ing still, when an English motorist rounded a market 
wagon, in that swift and careless way that we have 
noticed with so many English motorists, and rammed 
in under our mudguard and then quickly backed off 
and tried to run away, but the indignant market peo- 
ple and a friendly policeman stopped him and he re- 
turned, crestfallen, and fortunately it appeared that 
he had all the damage, to the great glee of the by- 
standers and ourselves! 

We went on over miles of fenny levels, past wind- 
mills and long dykes and canals and meadows, and 
through Swineshead, a trifling cluster of little houses, 
but notable as the place where King John, whom 
everybody hated, was poisoned by a monk; the grim, 
old local story has it that the King cruelly boasted 
that he would raise the price of bread, whereupon the 
monk told the abbot that, for the sake of his coun- 
trymen, he would give the King such a wassail that 




The cricket-field at Rugby 







A REMARKABLE WROUGHT-IRON 

INN SIGN 



The old building into which 
much of fotheringay was built 





........ . . .."..;;:.*:.......;::- 



The site of Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen of Scots was 

beheaded 



FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 229 

all England should be glad, and set about giving it 
to him. The story is full of grim details of a toad 
and a tankard of ale, and we thought of it again when, 
a little farther on, we reached Sleaford, which King 
John was able to reach before he died. 

But there is no indication now, hereabouts, of old- 
time tragedy. There are little cottages with clothes 
drying on the hedges, and pinafored women at their 
doors, and we notice a great windmill with the as- 
tonishing number of eight arms, and a young woman 
passes us bicycling to market with her basket on her 
arm, without a hat and in her long, unbelted apron. 
And just when we begin to think that any more fen- 
land might be monotonous, the fens cease and we 
enter a rolling country of superb great farms, su- 
perbly cultivated. And we pass close to the road- 
side an enormous pillar a hundred or more feet high, 
which looks as if it must commemorate some great 
event, and of course we must stop and investigate, 
and we find that it had been put up in the long ago 
on a wager, just to prove that a lofty column could 
be built on a prescribed narrow base, and that, once 
up, it was long used as a beacon light to guide people 
over the heath and fens, and that finally a George 
the Third statue was put there to make what the 
English would call real use of it; all of which struck 
us as beautifully absurd. 

Thirty-six miles out of Boston we motored into 
Lincoln, and made our way to the cathedral ; a splen- 
did towered and towering mass of yellow and gray 
on the top of a steep hill that was all red and green 
with brick houses and trees; and it is a cathedral that 
fills the eye and the imagination. 

Lincoln is a large, compact and busy city, and we 
found the narrow streets congested; but it was of 
more importance, after threading these streets for 
quite a distance, to find that the final climbing was 



230 FOUR ON A TOUR 

much too nearly perpendicular to attempt, even 
though we found a hill street without the barring 
posts that forbid driving ; and for the last part of 
the ascent we walked up a stairwayed passageway 
called a street. 

Because of the very magnificence of the cathedral 
and the general prosperity of the city we could not 
but notice the poverty and squalor that had crept 
close to this mighty structure in the poor little homes 
of the narrow hill-streets leading up to it as if in- 
deed reaching up in heartbreak toward all this mag- 
nificence at the top. 

But when one looks at the square-towered, mar- 
velous-fronted cathedral itself all thoughts vanish, 
except those that come from the splendor, the gran- 
deur, the nobility of it; and the interior is almost 
equally striking in its perfection and dignity. This 
is one of the most noble cathedrals of England, and 
one lingers in it and beside it, fascinated by the glory 
of it all. 

It does not have nearly so many personal asso- 
ciations as numbers of the minor cathedrals have, 
but here one does not miss such things; Lincoln 
Cathedral is so great, and so full of the sense of its 
centuries of age, and so nobly situated, that one feels 
no shortcoming in the absence of the usual personal 
memories, for such a cathedral is above persons. 

Leaving Lincoln, as in entering it, we passed 
through one of the ancient town gates — an old town 
gate seems forever to frame any town in the memory! 
— and we were off in the country again, and for some 
time ran once more into fen-land, and we drove for 
miles on top of a Roman dyke along an ancient canal 
of the Romans called the Foss-way, where the silver 
green water lay charmingly between lush green 
banks shaded by trees of a still darker green, and here 
and there was to be seen a green-roofed house of 



FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 231 

white. And we crossed the Trent, and it was pleas- 
ant to remember that the river was long ago given 
its name from the thirty (trente) kinds of fish found 
in it. 

It was a peaceful, slow-moving, warm and linger- 
ing afternoon, and we left the fens and at length 
swung into the famous Great North Road, and a new 
and eager zest came upon all of us with the fascina- 
tion of this old-time name. It is a splendid road, 
broad and level, with low hedges, and it runs through 
great stretches of cheerful and pleasant country, 
though by no means so fine a country as much that 
we have seen ; but we feel that there must be a happier 
condition here, for the fairly well-to-do homes seem 
to prove it, than in the richer regions of high-walled 
private parks and very humble cottages. 

We were hungry, and we drew up at a huge inn, 
and we went in with pleasant anticipations of solids 
and salads, arid, though we did not quite say it, it 
seemed as if an English inn such as this on the old 
North Road ought to furnish forth the good old 
Shakespearean enumeration of " some pigeons, a 
couple of short-legged hens, a joint of mutton and 
pretty, little tiny kickshaws." But what was our 
amazement to find that there was no food getable and 
that the dour proprietor was selling only drinks! 
But a few miles farther we came to an inn, the old 
Bell, which was worthy of the old road. How they 
did take care of us, with comfort and fireplaces, and 
most excellent service! We found this to be an 
inn where the English like to stop, and no wonder, 
when touring to or from Scotland; and a couple of 
big limousines were here with promiscuous, fashion- 
able luggage piled high on the tops and covered with 
the big, loose tarpaulins such as we afterwards came 
to know as typical of English travelers, for now and 
again on our journeyings we would catch sight of 



232 FOUR ON A TOUR 

such tarpaulins flapping in the wind (they always 
flapped!) as some big English car sped on. 

A few miles farther along the Great North Road 
we came to Scrooby, a rambling little village of little 
houses of brick, with little lanes leading aimlessly 
here and there, and on the farther side of the village 
we motored away from the road and through a gate 
and across a grassy field and stopped at an old, low- 
set house of whitened brick which had once been a 
moated grange ; and even now there is the line of the 
moat, and a little stream within it, at one end of the 
house. 

This was the house of that William Brewster who 
is so famous in Massachusetts annals, and the walls 
of the old house are of great thickness. It has been 
considerably modernized, but a Gothic window is still 
in place and much of the interior is unchanged; and 
it was a matter for curious speculation that, on the 
open green pasture over which we had just motored, 
there once stood a now completely vanished oak- 
timbered palace, built by Wolsey when he was Arch- 
bishop of York. 

Again we were off on the Great North Road, and 
there came over us more and more a vague sense of 
charm, with the thought that everybody has been over 
this road, from kings to highwaymen; or from high- 
waymen to kings, if one should prefer to put it that 
way, for there certainly have been some princely rob- 
bers and just as certainly some robber princes. In a 
way, we felt this road to be even more interesting than 
ancient Watling Street, and this was probably be- 
cause the surroundings of this northern road are still 
so natural and unspoiled. 

Going on northward, we reached Doncaster, pass- 
ing its empty racecourse, and finding its streets filled 
with the usual Saturday night throngs and the music 
of the Salvation Army band. We spent the night at 



FOTHERINGAY AND THE FENS 233 

Doncaster ; and realized that we were on a line prac- 
tically due east from Manchester, our starting-point, 
only some fifty miles away; and we thought of the 
great distances we had traveled and the experiences 
we had had and the places we had seen since the be- 
ginning of our journey, that seemed so long ago. 
But this only made our minds even more busily en- 
gaged with the possibilities that lay before us. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THROUGH THE NORTH COUNTRY 

IN the morning we followed the Great North 
Road for some miles beyond Doncaster, and then 
left it, as we turned to the right in the general 
direction of York. And it was interesting to see, on 
our way out of Doncaster, a large model mining 
village, where the workmen are given good homes to 
live in, and little gardens, instead of the ancient hov- 
els typical of the usual English mining village. 

It was a delightful Sunday morning run of less 
than forty miles to York, through an open and highly 
cultivated country, without the rich beauty of the 
southern counties, but with clumps of elderberry 
giving color to the hedges and with a general bright 
greenery of crops and growing hay and with not in- 
frequently the sturdy homes of yeomen adjoining 
their old stone barns; indeed, the distances average 
more homes than we have become accustomed to in 
England. Now and then we saw horses asleep in the 
fields at full length with their heads down, some- 
thing we did not remember ever having seen in our 
lives before; and it would seem that the raising of 
draught horses is quite a picturesque feature of the 
region, for we get the impression of seeing at least 
one colt beside its mother at each farm. 

We reached York and motored through its nar- 
row streets to the front of its tremendous cathedral, 
and from the first moment felt a profound sense of 
its immensity, and the feeling increased as we mo- 
tored slowly along the splendid length of side and 

234 



THE NORTH COUNTRY 235 

rounded the altar end of the cathedral and came back 
on the other side, where there is a tangle of little 
passageways and churchly buildings and deans' 
homes or whatever they may have been. 

The exterior of the cathedral, magnificently im- 
pressive though it is, is not quite so beautiful, so far 
as beauty alone is concerned, as that of two or three 
of the other English cathedrals, nor do its surround- 
ings increase its beauty with exquisite greenery, as 
with Salisbury and Wells; and that the front door is 
permanently closed cannot but cool one's enthusiasm 
a little; and so does the disagreeable manner of the 
custodians (this was the only church or cathedral 
where there was anything of this manner) , who acted 
as if they wished the cathedral entirely to themselves, 
and who almost realized that wish even when a regu- 
lar service began, and who used their most disagree- 
able manner in announcing that we must walk to a 
little shop some distance away, on a side street, and 
deposit there every umbrella, woman's purse, guide- 
book, camera, in fact every possible detachable; not 
that we object to the rule, if they really find it neces- 
sary on account of the suffragettes, but only to their 
entire manner, which must necessarily represent the 
state of mind of some sinecurist higher up. But even 
this repellent atmosphere does not check or disturb 
the feeling of positive awe and admiration with which 
we enter the interior and go up and down its tremen- 
dous length of aisles. 

In all, the memory of York remains with us as 
that of the finest and most impressive of all the Eng- 
lish cathedrals; the one which comes nearest to 
the ideal of so impressing the individual as to make 
the thought of the church itself absolutely supreme; 
and this effectiveness is much more due to the interior 
of the building than the exterior ; and it is not a mat- 
ter of beauty alone, of dignity alone, of size alone, 



236 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of impressiveness alone, but the splendid combina- 
tion of all. 

The view which one longs to have inside of the 
cathedral is of the full, immense length of it all, and 
this is checked by the unfortunate placing of the 
organ, but, by going a little to one side at the begin- 
ning of the nave of the cathedral, one may see beyond 
the organ to the very end, and thus obtain the effect 
of the full length of the interior, although without 
the full grandeur of the central sweep ; and the splen- 
did towering heights of the interior are superb. 

This cathedral is remarkably rich in stained glass, 
and the most notably beautiful window of all is the 
one made up of the five long lancets, some fifty feet 
in height, known as the Five Sisters of York; and 
this window or cluster of windows still retains its 
original stained glass, hundreds of years old, as also 
do other of the ancient windows of this wonderful 
cathedral. We looked with interest for the huge win- 
dow which rivals in size the largest window in Eng- 
land, the one that we saw in Gloucester, and found 
this of York to be a glory of color. If antique Per- 
sian rugs were translucent, the most glorious of them 
would express the color of such glorious glass. 

We remember, too, the wonderful octagonal 
chapter-house of this cathedral, marvelously built, 
and without a central pillar; and when we left the 
cathedral, after a long stay in the twilight gloom of 
its immensity, we went quietly out, for some half 
dozen or half score of people were coming in to attend 
the regular afternoon service, which doubtless would 
be conducted by more than that number of clergy. 

An immense cathedral, like an immense castle, is 
apt so to dwarf its surroundings as to make even im- 
portant things of negligible interest, but there is in 
the city of York quite a good deal that is well worth 
while. There are rows of fascinating, old timber 



THE NORTH COUNTRY 237 

houses, and there are ancient projecting stories nod- 
ding over narrow ways; quite old enough, some of 
these old houses, for the time of Isaac of York him- 
self; and there are city walls and city gates and even 
a portcullis. But, although we look at such things 
with interest, the entire impression of York is domi- 
nated, just as the entire city is dominated, by the 
cathedral. 

We left York by a splendid road through rich 
and level country, and within a few miles turned down 
a lovers' lane, clearly popular with bicycling couples, 
and went past the little station of Marston Moor — 
how odd it seemed to have a railway station of that 
name! — and a mile farther stopped at an isolated 
farmhouse and inquired for the site of the famous 
fight. 

Whereupon the daughter of the house led us 
through a gate and across several moorlike fields and 
out into the heart of the very scene, to where the 
relative positions of Cavaliers and Roundheads could 
clearly be made out; for over on one side was the 
low ridge, and on the other the little stream and some 
woodland. It was all so unchanged that the fight 
might have been yesterday ; and scarlet poppies were 
scattered about the field like drops of blood. All was 
a loneliness which was accented by the darting of a 
yellow fox to a hedge of thorn, in which he disap- 
peared. These many hedges, indeed, of blackthorn 
and hawthorn, are the one thing which mark a change 
from the days of Cromwell, for at the time of the 
battle they were not there. There have been efforts 
to plow this dreary land and make it into farms, but 
the daughter told us it was " too hard on horseflesh " 
and therefore was " laid down in grass." 

It was a hot day, and we were all thirsty, and this 
seemed an ideal place to drink well-water, and when 
we returned to the farmhouse a jug of it was 



238 FOUR ON A TOUR 

brought, and it was so sparkling and cold that we 
drank and drank again; something which for pre- 
caution's sake we had not heretofore allowed our- 
selves to do; and when one of us returned the jug, 
with a few words of appreciation, the well was 
proudly shown — and it was in the very drainage 
center of a barnyard! 

Replete but repentant, we went on our way toward 
Ripon, through a region whose houses and country- 
side continued to be of not the most picturesque qual- 
ity; this pointing out the double fact, familiar to 
every motorist, that it is delightful to motor through 
a fascinating country, because every moment of a long 
day is full of beauty and interest, but also that 
there is no hardship in motoring through a less fas- 
cinating country, because there are always the fine 
air, the swift motion and the constant sense of discov- 
ery, with the certainty that something of much inter- 
est is sure to be reached ; and even here, although the 
country was not beautiful, there was a constant im- 
pression of agreeable comfort. 

And it was somewhere along this part of the jour- 
ney that it came to us, with an amused wonder that 
it had not occurred to us a day or so sooner, that one 
strong reason why the countryside and villages did 
not seem so attractive was because we had ceased to 
see, in this region, the dormer-windows that farther 
south added so much to picturesqueness. 

As we neared Ripon a tremendous lowering yel- 
low storm was approaching, and we felt the high 
wind and put on new speed and were so fortunate 
as to get up the sharp ascent and into the stone- 
flagged square of old Ripon and to the shelter of the 
inn just before the storm broke. 

We ordered our dinner for seven, and watched the 
heavy storm from the windows, and soon it was 
over, and we walked down to the cathedral, an at- 




THE NORTH COUNTRY 239 

tractive but not notable building, but the best used 
of any cathedral we have seen. And we were so 
cordially ushered down the center aisle and placed 
so directly under the dean's eye that when we found 
we were in for a lengthy service, with dinner waiting, 
and with quite a massing of townspeople behind 
us, it was a bitter struggle between hunger and 
appearances ! 

Perhaps even more than with any other of the ex- 
cellent inns of our journey, does the memory remain 
with us of the well-ordered inn facing out on the 
square in Ripon, for it appealed esthetically to every 
sense. 

In the center of that square stands a tall stone 
shaft, and facing it is the town-hall, bearing the 
ancient municipal motto: " Except ye Lord keep ye 
cittie ye Wakeman waketh in vain." And the city 
still has its wakeman! And at nine o'clock we saw 
him appear beside this stone shaft, just as the wake- 
man has appeared beside that shaft, or the town- 
cross that preceded it, on every night for a thousand 
years, no matter what the weather! 

The wakeman wore a three-cornered hat and a 
long-tailed coat with brass buttons, and on the instant 
of the first stroke of nine he raised the great ox-horn 
to his lips and blew a long-sustained blast of fifty- 
eight seconds without pause or waver. A second 
blast came, and this of fifty-seven seconds, and then 
the third and the fourth. He used to hope, he says, 
with a sort of proud deprecation, to blow it for sixty 
seconds, but has regretfully given up the hope, as he 
is getting older, as he says, instead of younger. He 
has been the wakeman for ten and a half years and 
receives twelve pounds a year for his nightly service, 
but, as he puts it, with a suggestion of grievance in his 
voice, he must walk without pay in every civic 
procession ! 



240 FOUR ON A TOUR 

The custom originated with the setting of the 
watch, and it has not lost its interest for the townsfolk 
themselves, for some of them gather to listen and 
watch and time him. The ancient custom is taken seri- 
ously, but with not too much of seriousness, and it 
is delightful to find a custom so extremely ancient 
kept up in such a simple and matter-of-fact way. 

Ripon, though it holds to the ancient, is full of fine 
modern ideas, for the municipality has acquired well- 
equipped sulphur baths and spa waters and its own 
water system, so as to attract strangers and perma- 
nent residents here as a health resort; and in all it 
seems an admirable city. 

And it is noticeable in Ripon, as in other cities of 
England, what an amazing development of trusts has 
come about, for there are four separate banks here, 
which are branches of four London institutions that 
have similar branches scattered in dozens or scores of 
towns throughout the country; and the chemist shop 
is one of a line, under a central management, which 
also scatters its branches throughout England. 

We had come to Ripon because of Fountains Ab- 
bey, some three miles away, and it is the most beau- 
tiful ecclesiastic ruin in Great Britain. The abbey 
is in the center of a great private park, which is en- 
tered through immense park gates and thence past 
cattle and deer scattered pictorially among the gentle 
glades. Before long we came to an inner park gate, 
and there the car had to be left, and we walked on 
along a path with a great hedge of trimmed yew, 
fifteen feet high, on one side, and on the opposite 
side sloping banks that were solid with rhododen- 
drons, but not in blossom ; and we came to an opening 
in the hedge, and there was suddenly a splendid effect 
of water, with a bank rising abruptly behind it, and 
with trees and an octagon tower at the top; it was 
water set in a close-clipped lawn, and there were 



THE NORTH COUNTRY 241 

circles and rectangles in water and grass, and the wa- 
ter was on the very level of the grass. A little 
farther and there was an even more beautiful view, 
with a little pillared classic temple, soft yellow in 
color amid the soft green; there were waterfalls and 
exquisitely disposed statuary, and overhanging trees, 
and in every direction entrancing vistas and views. 

And all this was but an introduction to the abbey. 
All these were the private grounds of the Marquis of 
Ripon, who owns everything hereabouts, including 
the ruins. It was the perfection of landscape gar- 
dening, and of gaining amazing results by simple 
means. 

We climbed a hill, and we walked on under oaks, 
copper beeches, yews, elms, spruce trees two hundred 
years old and oaks vastly older, and came at length 
to where, from a low cliff, there opened a vista of 
sheer loveliness; an extraordinary view of the great 
romantic ruin, set in the distance on a lawn beside a 
running stream, with trees massed solidly behind, 
with banks rising green on either side, and in front 
the long-reaching, level greensward hemmed in by 
trees and flowers and the green-clad banks. 

We descended from the hill, and approached the 
ruins by a level walk beside the stream, and there 
was vast pleasure in walking through one after an- 
other of what were once huge monastic buildings. 
The great Norman nave of the abbey still stands, 
majestic though roofless; the great main tower is still 
there and the central arch, and there are ruined win- 
dows; there is a marvelous cryptlike series of subter- 
ranean chambers, of great extent and with groined 
roofs ; and we find that the stream itself still runs in 
conduits, beneath some of the ruined buildings that 
still remain. In all, we found it a place of wonder- 
ful beauty and interest. 

The return, by another path, was almost as lovely 



242 FOUR ON A TOUR 

as the approach, and at a final turn we looked back 
for a last and long look at this beautiful gray ghost 
of a vanished time. 

It added keenly to the pleasure of Fountains Ab- 
bey that we had it all to ourselves, though others were 
coming in as we left ; and that after the long walk we 
were at liberty to sit down at the park gates, in a 
stone-balustraded garden, beside the stream which 
had rippled down with us from the ruins we had just 
left, and enjoy a delightful tea, served from the gate- 
keeper's house. 

On leaving Ripon and going on northward, there 
shortly came a striking example of how, at any mo- 
ment, in motoring through England, one may hap- 
pen upon some fascinating memento of the past ; and 
that one never knows whether it is to be of a century 
or ten centuries ago does add so much to the fascina- 
tion — for as we go on, along the road which leads 
us through Northallerton, through a fresh open coun- 
try and between fields of very sweet-smelling white 
clover, and with great wide hilly horizons to the 
northwest, we notice by the roadside a plain stone 
obelisk and, stopping the car to see what it means, 
we see that it marks where the Battle of the Standard 
was fought in 1138. Well, Stephen was king then, 
and on this very spot a Scotch king was taken pris- 
oner — how strange it is to try to visualize it all, and 
how it seems at the same time so very far away and 
yet so very, very near! 

Again we are on for the northward, and we are 
aiming for Durham, and miles before we reach it we 
see a distant, square and shadowy block of stone 
through a cleft in the hills and we wonder if that can 
be Durham Cathedral, and we almost decide that it 
cannot be, but we are later to find that it is. 

A few miles before getting into Durham we de- 
toured to the right and followed one devious turn 



THE NORTH COUNTRY 243 

after another, and passed through several very black 
and ill-built colliery towns and a desperately bare 
and uninteresting neighborhood; an overworked and 
underfed sort of neighborhood. We were looking 
for the birthplace of Mrs. Browning, which we natu- 
rally supposed would be known in its very vicinity. 
We understood it was at Coxhoe, but neither post- 
masters, schoolteachers, letter-carriers, nor vicar's 
daughter nearby had ever heard of Mrs. Browning in 
connection with that neighborhood. We knew that 
for some unexplained reason there had always been 
great mystery thrown about the birthplace of Mrs. 
Browning and that the highest English books of ref- 
erence have differed as to what ought to be such a 
very simple matter; but it was astonishing to find 
that the vagueness persisted to the very doors of the 
house. The delightful vicar's daughter was increas- 
ingly concerned and interested; "Was Mrs. Brown- 
ing really born near here? " — and she warned us, as 
we went on, that the road was very dangerous; 
' There are children in the roads," she added, 
explanatorily. 

A little girl of twelve finally directed us to what, 
when we came to the house, we found to be the right 
place. Out of a dull colliery street we entered, by 
lodge gates, along a poetic and leafy drive and past 
a fine machicolated garden- wall and found the house, 
Coxhoe Hall, to be quite large, good-looking and 
homelike, with exquisite lawn and great stone dove- 
cote and huge stables behind. 

It was but a short distance from here to ancient 
Durham, and we wound up an abrupt hill, through 
the town, to a great open space beside the cathedral. 
And it is a cathedral of stern stupendousness. 

The towered front of the cathedral is on a cliff 
overlooking the river, so we first see the side of the 
building, and we see it in all its great and unbroken 



244 FOUR ON A TOUR 

and impressive length. And what first and last and 
most forcibly impressed us about the cathedral was 
its bleak grandeur; it is a fit cathedral for this bleak 
northern England; it gives the impression of great, 
bare strength ; and one remembers that the bishops of 
Durham were in the old days fighting bishops and 
held their hill half for the glory of God and half in 
defense against the Scotch. 

And the cathedral has age, for much of it was built 
as far back as in the ten hundreds. Inside and out 
it is rugged, bleak, powerful, with far less of carving 
and ornament than many another cathedral, but with 
huge Norman arches and enormous pillars and stately 
and almost unbroken length of interior. It is a 
gloomy cathedral, or at least so dark and stern as 
almost to be gloomy, and yet it is at the same time 
of a grave restfulness. 

We went to this cathedral before dinner, and after 
dinner, and twice in the following forenoon, for it 
continually drew us. At first the feeling was that it 
should be deemed the most adequate and impressive 
of all the English cathedrals; and yet, while not in 
any degree losing our sense of its almost overpower- 
ing grandeur, we did come to realize its lack of in- 
terior height as a drawback, and from the first we 
knew that the geometrical cuttings on some of the 
huge pillars were a blunder of centuries ago never 
to be remedied. But, although it may after all be 
second to York in complete impressiveness and 
beauty, it stands at the head of all in grandeur of 
effect and fit surroundings. 

The most noble view is from across the river, for 
thus it is seen splendidly rising above the water and 
above the trees. Much of the space beside the cathe- 
dral is rough-grassed, and boys decorously play there, 
as boys have played there for centuries, for this space 
and this privilege were granted as a right to the chil- 



THE NORTH COUNTRY 245 

dren of the town many, many centuries ago. And to 
realize all this gives one a pleasant glow. 

Another ancient right is still definitely remem- 
bered, for there is a huge bronze knocker on the main 
door of the cathedral, a glorious specimen of twelfth- 
century metal work, and to those who in the old days 
came and swung this great knocker, sanctuary was 
given at any hour of the day or night. 

Nowhere does there come a deeper impressiveness 
than with the falling of the dusk inside of this huge 
old pile, and the ghostly sense of it all becomes the 
deeper when one remembers that great numbers of 
Scotch prisoners, penned here by Cromwell, died piti- 
fully within these very walls. 

We found that all of Durham, whether in the cathe- 
dral, the castle or the town, make strangers welcome 
with a pleasant courtesy and an unwearied desire to 
show whatever is of interest; for they love the place 
themselves and desire that all should come to love it. 

The castle is likely to be overlooked, for it is now 
used for college purposes, and we even dreaded to go 
inside of its ancient walls from fear of disillusion- 
ment. But we did go in, through its beautiful Nor- 
man arched gateway, and were amply repaid. The 
ancient castle teems with the present-day life of pro- 
fessors and students, in a comfortable and busy way, 
and you see servants flitting about and you find de- 
lightfully cozy nooks and are shown the fascinating, 
ancient castle kitchen, huge flreplaced, still used for 
the cooking of to-day, and you feel the wonder of the 
tiny old Norman castle chapel and the dignity of 
tapestry-hung old corridors and of the great halls. 

We were shown about by a capable maid as guide, 
and then one of the professors himself went about 
with us. He was pleased that we hugely admired a 
magnificent old staircase of the blackest of black oak ; 
" But it is not black with age," he said, sadly; " old 



246 FOUR ON A TOUR 

oak ought never to be black. Blackness comes only 
from the vandalism of linseed oil, and time ought to 
give to oak only a silvery gray; " and he led us to an 
ancient carved choir-stall to show this color. ' Noth- 
ing wrong has ever touched this," he exclaimed, and 
he ascetically and esthetically shuddered when asked 
what he thought of the warm brown tones of old oak 
such as at Knole House: "Ah! That has been 
waxed! " It was delightful thus to get the viewpoint 
of such a man as to old oak of the warm browns and 
blacks that everybody loves. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

NORTHUMBERLAND AND THE ROMAN WALL 

WE aim from Durham into a rarely visited 
England, for we are aiming for what looms 
vaguely but almost mythically in the imagi- 
nation, the Roman Wall. We follow what seem al- 
most random roads and swing through Witton Gil- 
bert and mount among rising sweeps, with little col- 
lieries with their lofty wheels over the pit mouths, and 
black little villages, now near at hand and now show- 
ing in the distance; a region without flowers, this 
seems to be; with sweeping views of bareness and a 
splendid sweeping wind, and we reach an attractive 
region with meadows and rich fields, but still with 
only a few flowers and but a scattering of trees, and 
here and there again in the distance are the great 
black heaps and high-hung wheels that mean pros- 
perity and poverty; all this being a region which 
literally sends its coals to Newcastle. We mount 
higher and higher and pass through the dull street 
of a town of discomfort called Black Hill and notice 
a pawnshop with its doorway fairly greasy with mis- 
ery and use, and from here go down a long hill and 
across the Derwent — how one is always coming upon 
these long-known names as real ! — at Shotley Bridge, 
by a romantically placed old stone bridge, and go on, 
again mounting into great, high, bare rolling coun- 
try, with ever a cold wind coming full and free and 
now and then a dash of wind-driven rain. 

And we pass through a region with trees once more 
about us, and suddenly there opens before us a 

247 



248 FOUR ON A TOUR 

spreading view of broadly open country, and we 
breathe deep with the sheer joy of it all and we know 
that we are looking across into Northumberland and 
there is magic in the name. 

And we swing down a long close- wooded road into 
Riding Mill, a little stone-house Tyneside village in 
reds and grays and yellows massed among trees and 
shrubs and flowers, and there the Tyne flows between 
steepish banks and we follow up the stream to Hex- 
ham, where North Tyne and South Tyne and Tyne 
make literally a three-tined fork. 

From this bright, animated, clean, ancient but not 
very ancient-looking market-town we crossed on a 
long, old stone bridge, abruptly descended to from 
the town, and ran beside the North Tyne a half-dozen 
miles to Chollerford, where there are the remains of 
a great Roman camp and where a wonderful amount 
of Roman weapons, ornaments and utensils have been 
excavated and preserved. And, with walls and 
guard-houses and forum whose lines are still pre- 
served, we noticed, in a bit of Roman cement floor, 
the print of a dog's paw, and it pointed out the ironies 
possible to Time and Fame, that there could thus be 
stamped for eternity the casual footstep of a careless 
dog who put his paw heedlessly down upon the Ro- 
man workman's cement while it was still wet — a.d. 
125 or so! 

This camp was a great station on the old Roman 
Wall, but here the wall itself has disappeared. One 
comes to wonder, later, that any of the wall remains 
anywhere, for its block-stones have been used for all 
these centuries as a supply for the building of roads, 
castles, churches, walls and homes. 

We turn to the westward along what is known as 
General Wade's Road, and go mounting up and up 
through an immense loneliness and with a sense as if 
getting to the top of the world, and at length we come 



NORTHUMBERLAND 249 

upon a long section of the ancient wall. And there 
could not be a more imposing place to discover such 
a relic of the tremendous past, for there is a marvelous 
and solitary view for miles and miles in every direc- 
tion from this height to which the road has mounted 
with us. 

There are really two walls and two great ditches 
running parallel with each other entirely across 
the country; and antiquarians are still vainly disput- 
ing about them. The principal wall, which ran orig- 
inally clear across Great Britain, between where are 
now Newcastle on the east and Carlisle on the west, 
apparently following a bee-line and alternately dip- 
ping through valleys and clambering over heights, 
still stands, to a considerable degree intact, for a long 
distance here where we found it, and it is masonry, 
now five feet high, of squared-stone blocks. It is 
positively tremendous in its effect, here on these 
lonely hills, and we felt as if, had the motor tour done 
nothing more than lead us to such marvelous impres- 
siveness as this, it would for that alone have been 
thoroughly worth while. 

This great wall, built to hold back the Scotch, was 
probably made by that wonderful Emperor Hadrian, 
whose tomb and villa are still among the glories of 
Italy ; and it adds startlingly to this scene of supreme 
loneliness to know that, so it has been estimated, there 
were here, in the time of the Romans, fully one hun- 
dred thousand people, officers, soldiers, wives, camp 
followers and furnishers of supplies, living along the 
line of this wall; and ancient records show that the 
legions in that empire-building time of Rome were 
not all from Italy, but that at least some were Span- 
iards and Belgians. 

We had rather expected to run from here to New- 
castle and thence up the coast, but it occurred to us 
that it ought to be very much more interesting and 



250 FOUR ON A TOUR 

beautiful to go diagonally to the northward and thus 
explore some scarcely traveled Northumberland 
roads; and we did this and were delighted that we 
did, for it led us through a sweet and romantic coun- 
try, not in the least bleak, as we had expected, and 
yet with but very few houses in this entire cross- 
country region, and with not only a sweet wildness 
of roadside growth and yellowing gorse, but with late- 
blossoming laburnums near the few homes. And now 
and then to the northward there were charming 
glimpses of the deep, dark-blue Cheviots. 

We came to the North Sea, spreading before us, a 
great sweep of water, in the cool evening light, and 
we followed a splendid coastwise road, and stopped 
at Alnwick, after a delightful run for the day of 
eighty-seven miles and a total for the tour thus far of 
sixteen hundred and eighty-four. 

At Alnwick is a castle, built on a princely vastness 
of scale ; but the warders on these turrets high are not 
moving athwart the evening sky, for these are but 
stone figures giving a factitious effect of watchful- 
ness! We walked out in the evening, through the 
desolate-seeming, duke-owned town; indeed, this 
great county of Northumberland is divided among 
fewer proportionate owners than is any other county 
in England, and some of the individual holdings are 
of immensity; we walked out, and it was half -past 
nine when we left the hotel, and the long and linger- 
ing twilight was so tempting that we went on across 
the river, passing a parapet-poised lion with a funny, 
straight tail — the Percy Lion — and we wandered on 
through the meadows, looking across at the great 
castle and gaining thus an excellent idea of its vast 
extent. 

The claim is that it is the largest building in 
the world owned by a subject; and back in the vil- 
lage they tell us that the Duke of Northumberland 



NORTHUMBERLAND 251 

owns towns, villages, farms, waste-land and every- 
thing within a radius of forty miles, besides having 
exclusive rights in coastwise fishery! 

Next morning we were shown about through much 
of the huge pile, and it was curious to realize that one 
Scotch king was killed in besieging this castle and 
that another was taken prisoner here; but it was of 
very much more interest to us to see mementos of a 
battle many hundreds of years more recent and hun- 
dreds of times more important to us, for we discov- 
ered that Bunker Hill guns and shot are preserved 
here, with other mementos of that Lord Percy, son 
of the house and afterwards Duke of Northumber- 
land, who figured not only at Bunker Hill but at 
Lexington, where he brought up help for the re- 
treating British; a fact commemorated, as we remem- 
bered, by a stone cannon set beside the Boston and 
Lexington Road. It gave a sense of surprise, too, 
to realize what must have been the importance of our 
war to the British themselves, and what it must have 
meant to them to have the heir of the best part of a 
county walk up Bunker Hill against the rifles of our 
shirt-sleeved farmers. 

Alnwick Castle, though huge, is restored out of 
old-time atmosphere, and its barbicans and towers 
fail to stir one; there is really more atmosphere in a 
remaining drear city gate, and very much more in a 
plot of land near the town that is still used as a com- 
mon because King John, seven hundred years ago, 
gave it to the townsfolk as a reward for their aid in 
extricating him from a bog into which his horse had 
stumbled. 

From Alnwick we had a fine coastwise run of thirty 
miles, against a finely exhilarating sea breeze, with 
the sea for much of the time in sight, and we saw in 
the distance Holy Island, and had a distant sight of 
the great expanse of over-restored Bamburgh Castle, 



252 FOUR ON A TOUR 

and thus on to the Tweed and over the bridge into 
rock-perched Berwick. 

On account of its reputation and its Border- 
guarding fame, we motored up and down consider- 
ably through the dark-stone streets of Berwick, but 
found it rather a rough-seeming place, and disap- 
pointing as to interest; and we returned over the 
bridge and followed up the valley of the Tweed, a 
river whose very name brings up fascinating sugges- 
tions of romance and history. 

And history and romance soon appear following 
the suggestions, for we follow the picturesque river 
road for only a few miles before we turn in through 
a narrow, leafy lane and are facing the great ruin of 
the great castle of Norham, a castle memorable in 
itself and even more memorable through the superb 
opening lines of " Marmion." 

The ruin is now not much more than a shell; and 
we went about it with deep interest, and then had tea 
served romantically in its very shadow by the wife of 
the caretaker, whose home is a snuggery in the outer 
wall of the castle. 

From here we went through nearby Norham vil- 
lage, which lies on the level of the Tweed, and thence 
on through thick-wooded country, and crossed the 
sinister Till by Twizel Bridge, the same arching and 
ancient stone bridge over which the English troops 
marched to the field of Flodden. 

And thence up the delightful and romantic Till 
valley we went, and turned finally into the still tiny 
village of Branxton Moor, at the very edge of which 
the famous battle of Flodden was fought. There are 
still ancient, little, flower-bowered, thatched-roofed 
cottages in this village which were here at the time of 
the battle, and the queer, desolate-looking old church 
is here ; really the same church, though changed some- 
what, of Flodden time; and many of the slain were 



NORTHUMBERLAND 253 

buried close about, and ditches full of skulls and bones 
are still at times come upon. " An' some visitors 
wanted to gi' me a poond for a skull," said an old 
countryman ; but he would not sell. " For it wad no 
be decent," he said, with much of rustic dignity, " to 
sell the skull o' a man that fowt for his country." 
Then, after a pause: "But I wadna say they didna 
get some teeth," he added, cannily and slyly. 

The Battle of Flodden, fought in 1513, is remem- 
bered in Scotland as vividly as if it were fought last 
year. It is still looked upon as a national disaster, 
and we had not long before read in a newspaper that, 
in a recent address at Selkirk, Lord Rosebery had 
said that every man, woman and child in Scotland 
knows every detail of Flodden; and an uncle of a 
Scotch friend of ours, an old man who died only last 
year, always hoisted his flag at half-mast on that 
day. 

The main portion of the battlefield is a long slope 
that is now a series of grainfields leading up to a 
tree-sprinkled hill ; and where the fiercest of the bat- 
tle finally centered, where the English steel-clad 
horsemen charged and charged again where still the 
" Scots, around their king, unbroken, fought in des- 
perate ring," is where the battlefield narrows between 
the main hillside and a knoll that is now covered with 
grain, and on the summit of which has been placed a 
huge stone cross with the noble inscription, " To the 
Brave of Both Nations." The battlefield is in the 
midst of a wide-stretching scene of beauty, and the 
region, almost solitary save for the tiny old village, 
has no more inhabitants than it had four hundred 
years ago. 

We drove about in this now so quiet country to 
ruined Etal, and to ancient Ford Castle in its flower- 
ing gardens, a castle now much modernized, but still 
preserving the very bedroom in which the Scottish 



254 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



king slept before the battle; and we left the battle 
vicinity by way of Coldstream, on the Tweed, a town 
which gave name to Guards more famous than its own 
quiet self; and we noticed in Coldstream a police 
placard that would seem incredible if we had not be- 
come accustomed to the long British twilights, for it 
read, "Motor lamps must be lit to-night at 9.44"! 
And what an exactness, too! 

Thence we went to a place whose name had long 
fascinated us, but which is quite away from anything 
but motor approach, Kirk Yetholm. For this little 
village was long the headquarters of the gypsies of 
Great Britain and they kept up a sort of central 
authority, and here was their ruler's home. 

The village lies bleakly against a line of bleak- 
rising hills, and, though a poor little place, gives a 
powerful sense of isolation and aloofness. There are 
dark-eyed descendants of the gypsies still living here, 
though they no longer have a king or ruler of their 
own or an organization; and the place gives us, in 
leaving, a certain sense of sorrowful and romantic 
dignity, sitting up there bare and lonely, against 
those bare and lonely hills. 

From Kirk Yetholm we had a short run of a few 
miles, over roads that were richly picturesque, to 
ancient Kelso, with its ruined abbey set right upon 
a main and busy thoroughfare, like a town posses- 
sion to be enjoyed in its ruined beauty every day; and 
we drove out to nearby Floors Castle, the seat of the 
Duke of Roxburgh, a huge, modern-looking, over- 
grown-looking structure set in a marvelous park of 
wonderfully magnificent beeches which is inclosed by 
miles of the mightiest and most forbidding stone park 
wall that we have seen; and on a little knoll rising 
from a river meadow within the park of Floors we 
saw the fragmentary but finely-set ruins of ancient 
Roxburgh Castle; and from Kelso we followed along 



NORTHUMBERLAND 255 

the Tweed, in the cool of the evening, through a fas- 
cinating country as thick with greenery as if it were 
in southern England, with now and then a shimmer- 
ing glimpse of the beauty of the river, and views of 
the towering Eildons, triple landmarks of distinction, 
and thus by sweeps and bends of beauty came to that 
place whose very name suggests romance illimitable 
— Melrose. 



CHAPTER XXV 

MELROSE TO TANTALLON 

TO those who come to know and to love Mel- 
rose — and the words are synonymous — no 
words of appreciation can seem too high. For 
Melrose is so charming in itself and so delightfully 
stands for the best of Scotland and of Sir Walter 
Scott. The glamor thrown over the entire vicinity 
by the loving enthusiasm of Scott has, naturally, very 
much to do with it; but the important thing is that 
the enthusiasm is justified and that the visitor from 
across the sea comes so readily to regard the neigh- 
borhood with affection. 

Nor is it that there is any stupendous ruin here, 
any mighty cathedral or superb palace, or that here 
was the making of mighty history. A long since for- 
gotten skirmish was the nearest approach to a battle, 
and the nearest approach to a palace is Abbotsford, 
and the nearest approach to a mighty cathedral or a 
stupendous ruin is the small, sweet ruin of Melrose 
Abbey. But all the vicinity of Melrose is full of a 
most attractive restfulness and of a charm that is half 
suggestion. 

And the abbey is itself a delight, set aside as it is 
from the very center of the town, in its beauty of soft, 
yellowish gray. Much of the loving detail of the 
long-ago builders is still preserved, and there is about 
the building a fine air of seclusion as it stands there 
in the midst of its time-stained gravestones. At the 
other end of the town is an admirable peel- tower, al- 
most the only habitable example remaining in Scot- 

256 




Beside the ancient Roman Wall 




The town-gate of dismal Alnwick 







The sweeping stretch of Flodden Field 




The stone guardsmen on Aln- 
wick Castle walls 



The Till by Twizel Bridge 




Kirk Yetholm, the mountain village of the old-time gypsies 



MELROSE TO TANTALLON 257 

land of the fortified dwelling-house of a few hundred 
years ago as distinguished from a castle. 

Melrose itself is an attractive town, a mellow town, 
a town of amenities, a town that makes felicitous use 
of its riverside. We stayed at a delightful hotel a 
mile from the center of the place, with spacious 
grounds running down to the Tweed, and we spent 
our stay of three days in strolls and motor-drives; in 
delightful excursions in every direction, for every- 
where we found interest. 

Of course we went to Abbotsf ord ; but Abbotsf ord 
is something of a disappointment. One strongly 
feels, here in Melrose, how Scott has impressed him- 
self upon Scotland, but one feels it the more strongly 
by not thinking of this home that he built, for it does 
not adequately represent him. It is neither as beauti- 
ful nor as fitting as we had anticipated; yet, once 
within the walls of his library, one cannot but feel 
keenly the sense of his greatness and of his person- 
ality. And there is not a more striking sight in Great 
Britain than the steady procession of carriages and 
omnibuses that roll back and forth between the rail- 
way station and Abbotsford, filled with people who 
come from every quarter of the world to do honor to 
this wonderful Scotchman's memory. 

We went in the afternoon to Smailholm Tower, 
motoring to it over a road with a succession of beau- 
tiful views, and notably a view from where the road 
mounted after passing through the ancient hamlet of 
Newstead, where lived the masons who built Melrose 
Abbey (what a touch of the olden time!) and we 
found the view in looking back up the green and glim- 
mering valley of the Tweed, which was a scene of 
wistful beauty in a mild glitter of sunlight. 

We crossed the Tweed by a stone-arched bridge 
and mounted a long and lonely road beyond it, and 
motored up a private lane and across a field and came 



258 FOUR ON A TOUR 

to Smailholm; a square tower which stands superbly 
on the summit of a rocky height, dominating and 
watching over the country for miles around. And 
when we remembered that Scott as a boy was sent to 
live near this tower, and that he loved to wander about 
the ruin and the hilltop, it seemed all clear how the 
glory of the ancient days became part of the very 
fiber of his being. 

Black rocks are all about, and there are yellow 
gorse and heather growing thick, and high up in a 
hollow against the rocks is a reedy pool upon which 
two swans are superbly floating. We have seldom 
felt so keen or vivid an impression as beside this 
superbly-set and lonely tower. And when we went 
through its ancient iron gate and mounted its ancient 
stone spiral and came out upon its battlements there 
was a feeling as if all Scotland lay before us. That 
gray-walled tower on its windy height is one of the 
superb things of Scotland. 

We returned to Melrose by way of Bemerside and 
Dryburgh, the beautiful ancient abbey where Scott 
chose to be buried, and as we walked about through 
the ruined cloisters and passageways, his presence 
seemed to be everywhere. 

Another and briefer motor expedition was to where 
three ancient separate towers were built near to each 
other at a crossroads in a high valley. We went 
there over a road which gave us captivating views of 
Scottish countryside and frequent glimpses of the 
striking Eildons, which always, when in view, make 
themselves in so distinguished a fashion the center of 
the view. It was not that there was anything in par- 
ticular associated with these three towers, but that, 
grouped so strikingly, they gave such an air of ro- 
mantic flavor. And here we learned how very beau- 
tiful a Scotch garden may be, for at one of these 
ruins, Langshaw, the old earl who owns it has had his 



MELROSE TO TANTALLON 259 

gardener make it a glory and a delight with flowers 
of every precious color. 

We motored from Melrose, for the sake of both 
Wordsworth and Scott, and also to get in fuller touch 
with the fine spirit of this Borderland, to St. Mary's 
Loch; starting off along the Tweed, and thence to 
Selkirk, and thence into the valley of Yarrow; and 
as we drove into the market-square of Selkirk it was 
worth while to remember that it was into this square 
that the town clerk of Selkirk, a shoemaker who had 
been knighted for bravery, came riding back wounded 
from Flodden Field, the sole survivor of the Selkirk 
men, and he bore a banner that he had captured, and 
he told to the frightened townsfolk who gathered 
about him of the dreadful defeat of the Scotch; and 
the Selkirk folk, sturdy and prideful and full of local 
feeling as they are, still venerate an ancient banner of 
greenish silk which they firmly believe is the veritable 
banner of that long-past day. 

As we went to Yarrow, we saw across the river the 
ruins of Newark Castle rising with a grim sturdiness ; 
and the views, continuing, were alternately of sheer 
wildness and, to use that finely descriptive expres- 
sion of Wordsworth's, full of the pomp of cultivated 
nature. 

St. Mary's Lake is itself a long and narrow body of 
water, lying in the midst of bare, bare hills. And it 
is hard, at first, for the American in Scotland to ap- 
preciate to the full the beauty of the Scotch bare 
hills ; but he soon comes to see that they do not mean 
woodland devastation, and that there may be great 
distinction in their contour, and positive beauty in 
the blended coloring of their mossy rocks and green- 
ery of grass and flowering furze and heather. And 
in this drive we saw myriads of tall flowering spikes 
of foxgloves. And we saw a shepherd carrying a lit- 
tle lamb upon his shoulder nooked in a corner of his 



260 FOUR ON A TOUR 

plaid. And everywhere and always was a sense of 
fascination. 

There was a chill somberness about the lake itself, 
and a rainstorm came sweeping across it with a very 
dramatic effectiveness, and we took shelter in the little 
inn of Tibbie Shiels, where Scott was accustomed to 
go and where he led Wordsworth; and when they 
showed the huge drinking vessel which they said these 
distinguished visitors used, it seemed inevitable, even 
if irreverent, to suggest to each other that now we 
could understand how Wordsworth saw his " swan on 
still St. Mary's Lake float double." We returned to 
Melrose by a circuitous and more lonely course, and 
marveled that there could be such miles of such lone- 
liness here. 

When we almost reluctantly left Melrose, and 
turned still farther to the north, it was with a sense 
that we had been staying in a region of tranquil and 
singular charm. 

Instead of taking the main road from Melrose to 
Edinburgh, we went off through pleasant Earlston, 
an ancient little weaving village, and on through 
Lauderdale by a marvelous road which led us up and 
up with a sense of never descending, but always with 
an admirable surface to the road and always with 
the easiest of grades, so that it was an easy matter 
to take the entire drive of miles on " high." It was 
superb. 

Through Lauderdale we swept upward by the 
same marvelous road into the hills of Lammer- 
moor and felt again the mighty impression of Scott 
— for the mere word " Lammermoor " seems to mean 
only Scott! Now and then, but rarely, we passed 
some village, for it was mostly a region of wild soli- 
tariness, of dreary heights tremendous in their sweep- 
ing dreariness, of great immensity of bare levels, with 
views of miles and miles across the far-flung moors, 



MELROSE TO TANTALLON 261 

and always there was the splendid exhilaration of the 
rushing wind. 

There were tall posts at intervals to mark the road 
in winter- time when deep snow falls! — There were 
no fences, no walls, no hedges; there was just the bare 
open country. We passed a couple of young men 
on a pedestrian tour, but except for that, in this great 
solitude, there was rarely a sign of life, except for 
scattered sheep which, unsheared although it was the 
very end of June, looked, as they moved about with 
their long wool even hiding their feet, like little mov- 
ing hay-stacks. 

At length we descended, by long, long slopes, and 
passed through several dreary little villages — and 
Scotch villages, although not as a rule so bare as 
these, average far less of attractiveness than the Eng- 
lish — and went motoring off to the northeast for 
Tantallon, by way of Haddington. 

Haddington is a thrifty, orderly-built, common- 
place, deadish, stone-house town, with an open square 
and the ancient ruin of a red-stone church; this town 
was the home of that Jane Welsh Carlyle whose do- 
mestic affairs have been given volumes of exploita- 
tion, and it was interesting to see what kind of a town 
she left to share, with the irritable Thomas, the de- 
lightful place in delightful Chelsea upon which so 
much of sympathy has been wasted. 

Haddington shows also the ruin of the castle of 
that Earl of Bothwell who married Mary Queen of 
Scots, a man generally supposed to have been a mere 
violent nobody, but who, as we are reminded by the 
remains of his castle, was really among the most pow- 
erful nobles of Scotland before he married Mary, 
and at the same time a man of travel and of un- 
doubted bravery. 

It surprised us in approaching Tantallon to find 
ourselves once more running over attractive sylvan 



262 FOUR ON A TOUR 

roads through a fine farming region proudly showing 
rich crops of hay; but it was not pleasant to see 
women working as laborers in the fields ; and at length 
there came glimpses of the sea, and we found that we 
were near the ancient castle, and we left our motor 
at a farmhouse and walked down a path of foot- 
breaking round stones to a bare, flat, smooth, green 
promontory jutting out upon a lofty cliff into the 
bluest of sea water under the bluest of sky, with the 
Bass Rock rising white and green in the distance, 
and with, far off, a silvery shore marking the farther 
side of the bay; and about us white sea-birds were 
curving and screaming; and immediately in front of 
us was something which peremptorily and insistently 
made rocks and sea and birds and everything else, by 
comparison, seem negligible — for it was Tantallon 
itself, it was the great old castle, rising in terrible 
dignity above the sea. 

Tantallon, the mightiest stronghold of the Doug- 
lases, is one of the overlooked castles, because of the 
difficulty of getting there except by motor. And in 
its extent of ruins, its splendid location, its massive- 
ness, its memories, notably those of Scott, for never 
did a man impress his personality on so many places, 
it is most noteworthy and fascinating. 

The tremendous walls rise grimly, with three sides 
encompassed by the sea, which thunders at the foot of 
the perpendicular cliffs one hundred feet in height; 
and on the one landward side is a great, straight tur- 
reted wall, ditched and moated and drawbridged to 
invulnerability. To " ding down Tantallon ' has 
proverbially, for ages, expressed the Scotch idea of 
impossibility. 

The sea frets or roars or dashes forever against the 
foot of the rocks, and slides over dangerous green 
shallows and half reveals the reefs that are gray and 
black and sinister; and the wind seems forever to be 



MELROSE TO TANTALLON 263 

blowing. ' It's eerie here, when the wind souffles 
through," says the old caretaker, who walks here 
every morning from his distant home and who is as 
keen about the keys of the castle and about locking and 
unlocking the door as could be any warder of old. 

He takes us down into a deep, dark dungeon; " the 
grandest in Scotland," he tells us, proudly; and we 
descend, candle-led, through dark passages, step by 
step down into the heart of the cliff, and finally enter 
the dungeon itself, through a narrow arched door- 
way once fastened with iron grate and mighty bolts 
which fitted in the holes still pointed out. 

The old man, in that grim, faint-lit dungeon, ram- 
bles on ceaselessly about famous dungeon occupants 
of the past, and it seemed to him fitting, for he chuc- 
kled over it, that some by-everybody-else-forgotten 
Duchess of Albany — this word pronounced with the 
" a " even broader than in America, in contrast with 
the very sharp " a " of the Albany of London — was 
immured here for a year " for dinging her tongue " ; 
and he mentioned as rather a light matter that the 
heads of her husband and all her male relatives were 
shoved in to the wretched woman while she was here ; 
for some reason " dinging her tongue " seemed the 
one thing inexcusable, and the punishment a matter 
rather fitting. 

It was in climbing up to the battlements, six stories 
up (we say six from counting the fireplaces on the 
way) — it was in climbing by ancient stone stairways 
running through the very heart of the walls, and in 
the tremendous impressions that came from walking 
these lofty battlements and mounting upon the lofty 
turrets, that we found the chief glory of the place; 
and its tremendousness is unforgettable. 

Leaving Tantallon, majestic in its ruin, we jour- 
neyed rapidly for twenty-five miles along the Firth 
of Forth, passing under lofty, sudden, sugar-loafed 



264 FOUR ON A TOUR 

Berwick Law, identifying castles, villages and bat- 
tlefields with the stirring names of Scottish history, 
passing hundreds of golfers on rough-shorn links 
close to the waterside, and through, finally, some 
miles of close-built, tram-carred suburbs and at 
length into Edinburgh. 




The ancient peel tower at Melrose 



'*£$£<■} 




A GARDEN BY A LONELY TOWER 




The tower of Smailholm 



t4fPw 




•---* 



■■HI 



Grim old Tantallox 



UBHU 



CHAPTER XXVI 

THE LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 

EDINBURGH is peculiarly one of the cities that 
tell their tale to the imagination; and there is 
not only an old Edinburgh, but a new Edin- 
burgh — but even the new Edinburgh is a century old 
and is year by year gaining more of mellowness and 
dignity. Between the old city and the new is a great 
gulf fixed; a valley through which runs the railway, 
but the railway is entirely masked by a fine public 
park which fills the valley, and this park is fronted 
by Princes Street, quite one of the finest streets in the 
world. 

Edinburgh is a city to be loved ; a city to be stayed 
in; but it is not too busy a city for agreeable motor- 
ing and it is fine to swing down the long cobbled slope 
of High Street and the Canongate from the Castle 
to Holyrood — a trip impossible by tram-car, for no 
tram-cars run that way, and very tiresome on foot. 
It is delightful to go quietly along the superb line of 
Princes Street and to look across at the fetching gray 
masses of the old town, with its variedly picturesque 
gables and its crenelated sky-line, or to go into one 
of the fine Edinburgh shops, or to sit out on the up- 
per balcony of one of the ideal tea-rooms, with the 
high-set houses of the ancient town right across the 
valley and with the superbly placed castle topping its 
rocky height and with Arthur's Seat looming su- 
perbly on the left and with all the sparkle and life 
and gayety of Princes Street at our very feet. 

At one of these tea-rooms we spoke of some ex- 

265 



266 FOUR ON A TOUR 

quisite little cakes that were served, and we said that 
they reminded us of some cakes with which we had 
become familiar on the Rue Roy ale of Tours; 
whereat the pleased proprietor said that it had al- 
ways been traditionally believed that the recipe for 
these characteristic Edinburgh cakes was brought 
over from Touraine by the French cooks of Mary 
Queen of Scots. 

The towering ancient houses of Edinburgh, houses 
of great height, with story above story, houses filled 
with smells as evil as they are medieval, are steadily 
disappearing; and the castle has lost much of its old- 
time grandeur through huge, ill-looking boxlike ex- 
crescences built upon it in place of fine old battle- 
ments; but the view of the old town has still a vast 
picturesqueness. And there are many individual 
things of interest to see. The ancient crown jewels 
of Scotland, preserved in the castle, are particularly 
worth while, for they show so admirably the old-time 
jewelers' work, which the English crown jewels, al- 
though much more valuable, do not do, as they have 
been so tinkered up for each ensuing coronation as 
to lose their original character. 

A feature of much interest in connection with this 
castle is that, almost always, it is garrisoned by troops 
in the brilliantly picturesque Highland costume, and 
the fortunate visitor will see these troops parading on 
the esplanade in front of the gate. And there are 
old houses worth seeing, along the High Street, and 
it is extremely interesting to pick out the one which 
was the veritable home of grim John Knox and fas- 
cinating to look into the ancient close of the inn where 
the officers of Prince Charlie made their headquarters, 
and still more fascinating to go about ancient Holy- 
rood, with its rooms and passages full of the memo- 
ries of Mary Queen of Scots, and with its veritable, 
ancient Stuart furniture, made for these very rooms, 



LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 267 

and with its ancient portraits of the old-time people 
whose lives were associated with this place — but this 
does not refer to the long line of made-to-order kings 
hanging in frames along both sides of the great ban- 
queting hall! And even the comparatively meager 
remains of the ancient Abbey of Holyrood are of 
interest, although we have been seeing so many 
finer and greater ecclesiastical ruins. 

In a little graveyard, walled in and almost forgot- 
ten, in the newer part of the city, it was curious to 
come upon the unexpectedness of a monument in 
memory of the Scotchmen who died in our Civil 
War; "to preserve the jewel of liberty and the 
framework of freedom," as the noble inscription, 
quoted from Lincoln, reads. 

There is no finer example than the new town of 
Edinburgh, with its dignified streets and crescents, 
of admirable and adequate town-house architecture. 
But neither the fine-looking present-day homes nor 
the houses of ancient days are of strong enough ap- 
peal to keep the motorist within the limits of even 
an Edinburgh, when he is at liberty to respond to the 
call of the country and of the free fresh air. The 
insistent lure of the road ever leads onward. 

But before leaving Edinburgh we took an evening 
run down to Leith, the ancient port of the city, 
through stone-block-paved streets, close-lined with 
high-set stone tenements ; and at Leith we found the 
little fishing boats tucked away for the night in stone 
basins, and the fishermen chatting and smoking con- 
fabulatively as they sat on the stone ledges, and there 
was about these men a certain suggestion of Holland 
in their costume. The fishwives were even more 
Dutch in appearance, with their heavy woolen stock- 
ings, their full skirts almost twelve inches from the 
ground, and their short sleeves that stopped within 
two inches of the elbow and turned back in a cuff 



268 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of white muslin to the shoulder. Every fishwife 
seemed to be standing in her doorway, knitting, and 
on every doorstep were the waiting fish-creels which 
the women next morning were to carry on their backs 
through the streets of Edinburgh, calling out their 
high-pitched wailing call of " Caller herrin'." Next 
morning we ended our delightful and restful stay in 
Edinburgh, and headed our motor onward, and first 
in the direction of the castle of Craigmillar. 

There are so many places connected with the un- 
happiness of the career of Queen Mary that it is a 
pleasure to find at least one that is associated with 
the brief time preceding the beginning of tragedy. 
The castle of Craigmillar, reached by a short but 
devious ride out of Edinburgh, is of great extent, 
and, although the building is a ruin, there are many 
rooms through which one may still wander ; and from 
the particular room which history or tradition asso- 
ciates with Queen Mary herself, the window does not 
open toward distant Edinburgh, which is in view 
from much of the castle and where her enemies were 
in force, but out over sweet meadows and woodlands 
to the glory of far-away hills toward the sunny 
southward. 

The attitude of an excellent custodian of any old 
place is always keenly against restorations, and here 
at Craigmillar the admirable guardian was no excep- 
tion. " Much of the stone roof is new; a great mis- 
take," he said sadly. On the whole, we found Craig- 
millar highly worth while. 

Through a rather bare and disagreeable stretch we 
made a short run to Roslyn Chapel and Roslyn 
Castle, but found them of rather feeble interest after 
the many noble things we had been seeing, and they 
do not at all measure up to the ideas evoked by " the 
lordly line of high St. Clair." However, Roslyn 
Chapel is an elaboration of detail, and is a finished, 



LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 269 

indeed almost over-finished, fragment of a church 
that was never built. 

From Roslyn, rather than return prosaically by the 
way we had come, to Edinburgh, and thence go on, 
we aimed diagonally for the Forth Bridge, which we 
wished to look at ; and it was a ride well worth while 
to round under the shadow of the Braid Hills, piling 
up against the sky, and motor forward through a 
pleasant and varied country thick with the invariable 
golf links — golf links seem to be underfoot all the 
time in Scotland ! — with now and then unusual views 
of Edinburgh, with its neighboring Salisbury Crags, 
its superbly cliffed castle, and the great perspective 
of the city itself, spreading out toward the sea. 

We reached the Forth down a road from which 
we had a splendid view of the Forth Bridge, a struc- 
ture which stands preeminent of its kind; and when 
a train went over it, with engine and cars seeming not 
much bigger than flies crawling between the huge 
cantilevers, we had some idea of how big the bridge 
really is. 

From here we motored up the southern side of the 
Forth, with a long range of mountains in the dis- 
tance and in front of us some positively stupendous 
artificial mountains, formed of refuse from shale-oil 
mines, so large and so many as to impose their lofty 
truncated characteristic upon the landscape. 

Passing this region, the road led us pleasantly to 
Linlithgow, that ancient palace of Scotch royalty, 
still remaining in complete extent, though in ruinous 
condition, where Queen Mary was born. And it was 
curious to think that we were really at the very place 
where that strange career began which led Mary to 
be Queen of France and Queen of Scotland and 
finally the victim of the Queen of England. 

Linlithgow is still a fair and stately palace, built 
in the form of a great hollow square, and it stands 



270 FOUR ON A TOUR 

in a sweet, fair bit of countryside on a slightly-rising 
knoll above a pretty loch, at the very edge of a 
bare, leather-working old town. 

As we go on our way toward Stirling there comes 
a cold and dreary rain, and under a hedge we see 
a pair of trampers, a man and woman, shivering away 
from the chilling wind and wetness; and we wonder 
what the great army of similar trampers throughout 
Great Britain do when the nights are wet and cold. 

Tall trees border the road, and across the Forth 
are misty masses of hills, and in the fields some farm- 
ers are plowing, and we meet a farmer driving with 
horses abreast — for horses hitched tandem is not the 
custom in this northern part of the country. The 
road is of extraordinarily good quality, the best thus 
far of the excellent roads of Scotland. There are 
sweet pools tucked among low hills, delightful glades, 
a stately gate opening into an avenue that doubtless 
leads to some stately hidden house, and ever and anon 
the greenery is brightened with brilliant yellow 
gorse. 

We passed through Falkirk and remembered that 
beside this town there came a gleam of glory to the 
retreating army of Prince Charlie ; and Prince Char- 
lie does so connect what seem the Stuarts of history 
with our own time, for both Washington and Frank- 
lin must have received the news of Falkirk and the 
other fights of that brief uprising as contemporary 
events of great interest. 

The valley broadens, there are tall chimneys send- 
ing up smoke and fire, a purple line of hills becomes 
more deeply empurpled, the rain ceases but the 
diminishing day becomes colder and gloomier, the pur- 
ple hills creep nearer to us; and suddenly we see 
rock-perched Stirling Castle rising nobly in the 
distance. 

Before reaching Stirling, we turned aside a little 



LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 271 

to visit one of the most romantic and famous of bat- 
tlefields, that of Bannockburn. And here, on a com- 
manding knoll, they still preserve the ancient bored 
stone in which Robert Bruce placed his standard on 
that famous day, six hundred years ago, and from 
this spot the course of the battle may still be under- 
stood. A rolling country is all about, with fields and 
farmland, and here and there a pleasant home; and 
a Scotchman, driving by in his two-wheeled gig, 
draws up, seeing that we are strangers, and explains 
all about Bannockburn with wealth of intricate local 
detail; for Scotchmen remember Bannockburn with 
immense pride after all these centuries. 

We go on to the city of Stirling, clustered as it is 
at the base and up one side of the towering rock 
on which Stirling Castle lifts its ancient walls; and 
after dinner we climb the long, long slope, up through 
the streets of the town, and through an interesting 
broadening, far up, into a sort of market-place lined 
with old-time houses ; and we go higher than all this, 
past some ruined once-while mansions of centuries 
ago, to the old castle on the very top. 

But we go on foot, for it does not seem a mo- 
torable hill, and we find, as we climb far up, that 
there is an additional reason why this road is not very 
motorable, for streets and sidewalks alike, along the 
steep road, literally swarm with children who are 
sprawling, crawling, walking or playing, the swarms 
being interspersed with mothers holding babies 
by plaids folded long and tied against the shoulder 
in such a way as to leave the arms of the mothers free ; 
and every woman is knitting, her needles flying 
steadily and her eyes not watching the work. 

Reaching the top and the castle, we wandered 
about the battlements in the long, late twilight, and 
looked off at the great broad levels far below us, 
where the mazy Forth unravels in one great, slow- 



272 FOUR ON A TOUR 

curving bend after another — and an amazing series 
of river-bends it is. 

Even more interesting than the picturesque bit of 
antiquity on the top of this height are the wide- 
spreading views ; and from a corner of the castle wall 
we had a more superb effect of sunset and landscape 
than anywhere else on our entire journey. It had 
been storming, and the clouds still hung in scattered 
masses along the horizon ; it was nine o'clock, and the 
sun itself, out of sight from where we were standing, 
had thrown a superb yellow luster over the entire land- 
scape; and then, as a dramatic surprise, it laid an 
immense band of gold across miles and miles of slopes 
and meadows, and threw showers of gold on the 
clouds; and off at the northward the heights of the 
Highlands stood in lines of royal purple, and all 
the scene was a glory of purple and gold. 

Next morning we left Stirling, crossing the Forth 
on a bridge beside an ancient arched stone bridge long 
disused, and past a towering monument to that Wal- 
lace who looms so toweringly in Scotch history, and 
we remembered that here he fought one of his brave 
rights; and we go on through Alloa and toward 
Dunfermline. 

We had been noticing, on some of our days of late, 
a shortage of flowers, and we had feared that the 
shortage would increase, but on this road there were 
many, many flowers, and especially roses; little cot- 
tages seemed to have a veritable rivalry in roses, in 
great bushes and vines, and there were long stretches 
of wild roses, pink and white, along the roadsides. 
Flowering foxgloves grew thick and wild, and in all 
it was a beautiful road through a beautiful country; 
and a line of lofty mountains went marching along 
on our left. 

We passed a caravan of three little wagons, with 
low, rounded cloth tops ; but these were English folk 




The sunny ruins of Craigmillar 




Far up the hill toward Stirling Castle 




Where Charles the First was born 




1 



£b4 



BbSH 




. 



The St. Andrews golf links 



LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 273 

and not gypsies, and the children peered curiously 
out at us ; we passed a herd of cattle that blocked the 
road for some minutes; we passed children just out 
of school, with all the boys and many of the girls 
barefooted; a cold rain came on, but we barely more 
than got the top up than the rain stopped and all was 
clear again ; we went past a cluster of white cottages 
with roofs of red tile, and through rich farmland and 
pastures, with fat cattle and fat horses grazing; and 
cart-horses that we met on the road had collars rising 
high, in points of black leather ornamented with 
brass or nickle circles or with bunches of ribbons or 
tall and slender feathers. 

And we came to Dunfermline, where there are 
some ancient ruins of minor importance that are 
readily to be seen from a main road, and among them 
is an ancient palace ruin which is of interest as being 
the birthplace of the ill-fated Charles the First; and 
the city is also the birthplace of one the very reverse 
of ill-fated, for there is here the simple little cottage, 
which looks like so many other little Scotch cottages, 
where first saw the light the American man of many 
libraries! Dunfermline is an old linen- weaving cen- 
ter, and has been heavily endowed and aided, and 
gives an impression of being a sort of personally con- 
ducted town ; and in all is a place neither picturesque 
nor attractive. 

For a time there are bare country and poor vil- 
lages, and then villages and countryside grow more 
attractive again, and before long we come to the ex- 
ceedingly long town of Kirkcaldy, stretched out along 
beside the Forth, and then we follow a road that rolls 
us on through rolling country, past now and then a 
town among the hills; and clouds and rain gather 
over the water, and through a cleft we catch an un- 
expected sight of towering Edinburgh Castle, far off 
on the farther side of the Forth, for we are going 



274 FOUR ON A TOUR 

in an easterly direction and practically paralleling our 
course from Tantallon westward. And all this here- 
abouts is in fascinating Fife — the ancient " King- 
dom of Fife." 

Past Kirkcaldy we notice frequent orchards, and 
there is considerable manufacturing, with trim and 
rather commonplace villages, and we make a detour 
of three miles to the left and come, in a lovely bit 
of old Scotland, to the ancient Scotch palace of Falk- 
land; a long-corridored, attractive old place, some- 
how suggestive of the Touraine country, and thus 
remindful of the great amount of French influence in 
Scotland. Much of the palace is preserved, though 
very much has vanished, and there is still a fine old 
gateway, and there is still one of those grim prison 
rooms known as bottle-dungeons, with its ceiling 
curving in and down and away from its only entrance, 
which is a hole in the center of its top. In one of the 
dungeons of this palace, but with its identity lost, 
the Duke of Rothesay, the eldest son of the King of 
Scotland, was starved to death, as described in the 
" Fair Maid of Perth," five hundred years ago — how 
the centuries do merge so readily, into one another! — 
and it is curious that the title of Duke of Rothesay 
is still borne by the eldest son of the King of Great 
Britain. 

We swing back to the main road to the eastward, 
and pass through a little village whose front gardens 
are a glow of tall, dainty delphiniums, or a blaze of 
yellow nasturtiums, or rich in white pinks and in 
orange lilies. We pass through Cupar — a pleasant, 
busy, clean place — and then once more through a 
beautiful country, past a village whose little front 
gardens are marvels of glow with great masses of 
snapdragon, with walls reddish pink with perennial 
pea, with numberless blossoms of the white candy- 
tuft, with bushes of rosemary and of golden box. 



LOWLANDS OF SCOTLAND 275 

Through alternate hedges and low stone walls we 
faintly see lines of mist-dimmed hills, and it is fine 
farming country, with rows of orderly haystacks each 
looking exactly like a monster charlotte russe under 
a woven cap of hay; and thus we come to St. 
Andrews. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 

THE last part of the run to St. Andrews was 
half a dozen level miles along the North Sea 
road, for here we have come to the sea again. 
St. Andrews has ancient ruins, though in rather frag- 
mentary condition — a cathedral and a castle and a 
high tower, that were built in exceedingly effective 
positions overhanging the sea, and they are of dig- 
nity and importance in Scottish annals. 

These ruins of St. Andrews, however, are not of 
the first order of interest, but its golf links and its 
sea-bathing are extremely interesting — at least, the 
sea-bathing was on the day we were there. St. An- 
drews is the fashionable resort of Scotland, and the 
bathing is fashionably done; or at least exclusively; 
so exclusively, indeed, that the women bathe in rocky 
pools entirely by themselves — but in full view of the 
cliff top, where are a promenade and seats for towns- 
folk and visitors! And it was mildly astonishing to 
see, in this fashionable, ecclesiastical old town, what 
may be called untrammeledness as to costume, and as 
to mermaidlike posing among the rocks. 

The golf links, the most famous in the world, are 
distinctly disappointing in appearance, hemmed in 
as they are by railway sheds and a line of railway track. 
But there is a fine beach on the farther side and a 
beautiful surf, and in spite of the look of the links, un- 
couth to anyone accustomed to bright, green, smooth 
turf on golf links, we were quite ready to believe these 
to be of supremely good quality, and it was inter- 

276 



HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 277 

esting to learn that for the payment of a small fee 
visitors are at liberty to play there. 

" And so very much depends," as a Scotch player 
put it to us, " upon the kind of golf ball one uses. 
For myself, I use the very best kind made in Great 
Britain." And he showed one; and it was stamped 
with the name of the London agent of an American 
factory! And we thought we now saw a reason 
why a very large area of red, white and blue should 
be gayly flying on the best hotel of the several 
close by! 

Late in the afternoon we ran on to the north and 
came to the River Tay and found an admirable steam 
ferry, which was entered on one side and left on the 
other side, instead of being entered and left by oppo- 
site ends. 

The Tay is very broad here, and is really an arm 
of the sea; and we looked with interest at the new 
railroad bridge above us, which has replaced the one 
which went down with such dramatic disaster one 
stormy night some years ago. We landed in Dun- 
dee and ran through the broad streets of this fine, 
busy, self-respecting city to our hotel. 

To-day was the first day in Scotland on which we 
had counted the railroad grade crossings that we came 
to, and the total was nine ; and we noticed, at the one 
or two where we had to wait for trains, that the same 
practice prevails that we notice in England; for, the 
gates are shut exactly at the moment at which the 
train is scheduled (always pronounced " sheduled " 
on this side of the ocean) to approach and that then, 
no matter how many minutes late the train may be, 
everybody must wait. And sometimes the wait is 
long and patience-trying and there is always still 
more exasperation in the creeping leisureliness with 
which the gatekeeper opens, by hand, the roadway 
after the train has passed. 



278 FOUR ON A TOUR 

We liked Dundee, for it seems so genial and en- 
terprising, but it really has no sights to detain one; 
and yet it does have one delightful sight, after all, 
for along the whole length of its main street it has 
great balls of flowers in bloom, in great ball-baskets 
on the trolley poles that run down the middle of the 
road, and these flowers are a very pretty sight, 
indeed. 

We ran next morning, from Dundee to Perth, for 
a trifle over twenty miles through what is called the 
Carse of Gowrie, a level plain, an extremely rich 
farming region, with villages of stone cottages, gayly 
bedecked with flowers and with mossy roofs of tile 
or slate or even of thatch prettily mossed in many 
shades. 

And we noticed a sight which at once aroused our 
sympathy: a fine dog, a collie, barking dolorously, 
tied underneath a wagon marked in great letters, 
" D. C." — which of course meant " Dog Catcher " ; 
but when the driver stopped in front of a cottage and 
opened the doors of the wagon, at the back, we saw 
that our sympathy was wasted, for it was a bread 
wagon and the letters were a company name ; another 
of the myriad bread wagons that we have been see- 
ing in Scotland, not only in towns, but on the coun- 
try roads, and especially north of the Forth; and, 
even if the Scotch folk exemplify the old phrase and 
live by bread alone, they could hardly eat up as much 
as we have seen! 

Perth is an ancient city with its ancient landmarks 
gone; but it is a charming little city, a beautifully 
situated city, and there are some attractive and al- 
most old, narrow passages, called " vennels," that pic- 
turesquely attract and which are likely to yield 
antique treasures from their tiny little shops. A 
clean, bright city this is, and of course one's fancy 
pictures the " fair maid of Perth " here. Directly 



HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 279 

on the riverside there is still the great level Inch, 
where the terrible clan battle was fought out so 
grimly so long, long ago ; for it was a very real con- 
flict that Scott puts into his pages. And it may be 
mentioned that the Inch, being an inch, takes a mile 
or so of river-front. At one end of the Inch there is 
a monument to the men of a regiment of Cam- 
eronians, and we noticed with interest that the regi- 
ment saw service not only in India, South Africa and 
in Crimea, but in America in 1814. 

Accompanied by friends in their own motor who 
wished to show us an unusual road, we motored out 
of Perth for the Devil's Elbow. It was a sapphire 
morning; and soon there were mountains all around 
us, and other and loftier mountains in blue undula- 
tions on the horizon. We went by way of Blair- 
gowrie, and all around us in that vicinity were enor- 
mous acreages of red-raspberry bushes, and we found 
that they were cultivated here for jam factories. In 
this vicinity, too, we passed a wonderful hedge of old 
towering beech-trees, which were planted many years 
ago, very close together, and now reached to the 
height of well over a hundred feet. They form a 
marvelous hedge and are clipped in perpendicular 
smoothness as high up as ladders can with ingenuity 
be raised for the clippers. 

We come to the Bridge of Cally, and here the road 
forks and we take the wilder fork of the two toward 
the right and it leads us up a wonderfully pictur- 
esque road, ever more and more beautiful, through 
alternating richness and bareness and among great 
heights and solitudes, for we are mounting through 
the great pass of Glen Shee. On one side, down be- 
low us, is a mountain stream in a prodigious hurry, 
and valley and mountains are alike a faint glory of 
heather in its early lavender tint. 

The road is not nearly so good as we have been 



280 FOUR ON A TOUR 

accustomed to, but it is wonderful that such a road 
as this is kept up through this region of utter wild- 
ness; and on this road, for the first time in Great 
Britain, there is a considerable scattering of loose 
stones. On the somewhat easier slopes on our left we 
gradually came to realize that lines of great stone 
walls had in places a curious resemblance to the 
shapes of houses, though at first we did not take them 
really to be houses; but houses they were — houses 
they had once been — for this valley, now so desolate, 
was once thinly inhabited by cottagers, shepherds, 
and weavers, each cottage having its hand-loom; but 
the coming in of machinery killed the hand-loom in- 
dustry and brought poverty, and rich men wanted 
the region for grouse-shooting, and the population 
were induced and compelled to leave and their little 
houses were dismantled. They were small, little 
places, huddled against the mountain-side from the 
storms, and to take off the roofs was almost all that 
was necessary to make their fronts look like parts 
of an ordinary field wall; and these ghosts of homes 
add to the tragic loneliness of the valley. 

From what is called the Spital of Glen Shee, a 
tiny little whitewashed inn, the road passes on to a 
still greater loneliness, and here and there in hollows 
and on the mountain-tops the snow has still remained. 
And at length we came to the Devil's Elbow, fit- 
tingly named as it is from its dangerous curve, as 
if the devil had twisted his hand back to his shoul- 
der to make the elbow-angle sharp and savage. Still, 
with care, this bend was safely manipulated; and in 
fact it was not really so dangerous, though it gave 
the impression of being so among those grim sur- 
roundings, as one or two other places where we had 
already been on this trip. 

We continued for a distance beyond Devil's El- 
bow and rose to a sort of watershed height, where 




ROSE-BOWERED SCOTCH COTTAGES 




The Birnam Wood of Macbeth 




In the pass of Killiecrankie 




A FAMILY OF TRAMPERS 



HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 281 

views tremendously grand included heights over 
heights in all directions. And here in this superb 
spot, with mountains of stern and solemn beauty 
stretching off in every direction, was our Farthest 
North! 

A curious thing is that these mountains, although 
they have so towering an effect, are actually, even the 
highest, barely more than four thousand feet in alti- 
tude. But that they do really have all the effect of 
being of tremendous height is the important point, 
after all, and such an effect they do certainly have. 
From here we might have gone on farther to the 
northward, but that farther region would have been 
not only practically without historical interest, but 
also without scenic interest as compared with what 
we have been seeing in Scotland and what we are 
going to see within the next few days. And here in 
this wild spot we are not only so far to the northward, 
and not only among impressive mountains, but are 
on a road which itself climbs to a height of two thou- 
sand feet above the sea — which is very high indeed 
for any road of Great Britain — and so sudden has 
been the rise that since leaving the Spital of Glen 
Shee we have climbed about nine hundred feet. 

From here we retraced our way, with somewhat of 
variation as to road, to Perth, where we spent the 
night. There, our room looked out toward the broad, 
swift River Tay and we went to sleep to the sound of 
its soft roaring under the stone-arched bridge, and 
we awoke now and then in the night and ever was 
that soft, fascinating sound; and to us the memory 
of Perth is of the long sandy Inch and of the softly- 
sounding river. 

Perth is the gateway of the Highlands; and here 
at the gate, both in the gardens of the city and in the 
countryside around about, we notice again what a 
glory there is of flowers and of what a wide variety 



282 FOUR ON A TOUR 

of kind and color; whole gardens azure blue with 
delphiniums and anchusa, whole cottage fronts a bril- 
liant velvety scarlet with a little vine called tropeo- 
lum, growing with such great success only here in 
Perthshire. 

At the hotel in Perth we found, as in so many 
places, that there was no encouragement to the Ameri- 
can to ask for coffee for breakfast, and we noticed 
that the guests who wished tea were given individual 
teapots and silver jugs of water, but that the out- 
landers that wished coffee had it poured gingerly by 
a waiter who tried to make it half milk. They sim- 
ply do not understand coffee, and the question, 
" White coffee or black? " is a very customary one all 
over Great Britain, and the general idea is to have 
the coffee poor to begin with and then make it as 
much like white milk as possible. And all this, not that 
they are inhospitable to strangers, but that few of 
them have any comprehension of what good coffee 
means. 

We left Perth in the glory of another perfect 
morning; it had rained while we breakfasted, but the 
sky had cleared and the air was enchantingly pure. 
We struck out for the northward, but a little more 
to the northwest than the road to the Devil's Elbow, 
for this morning we are following the valley of the 
Tay ; and our minds are so filled with the grim glories 
of yesterday that we are anticipating other sternly 
beautiful views — and so it is with pleasurable sur- 
prise that we find ourselves running on among moun- 
tains purple and green, ever luring and alluring, over 
a level road lovely in the extreme, with beeches on the 
hillside as if in parks and among them a dreamy, 
ferny undergrowth in pale-green light; and when 
bare hills come into view they are richly covered 
with heather and with great masses of foxgloves, very 
tall and slender, waving in the breeze. It is a beau- 



HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 283 

tiful road, in trees and stream and hedges and hills 
and rocks, and the very bareness which alternates with 
the rich greenery adds to the fascination of it. And 
we noticed that, as if forgetting that this is a road 
up into the Highlands, there are great numbers of 
roses in bloom, and we observed in particular the old- 
fashioned yellow rose which at home we know by the 
name of the Harrison rose, from its coming from the 
Harrisons of Virginia, but here it is distinctively 
termed the " Scotch rose." 

Just before crossing the Tay into Dunkeld we 
passed through a wood with the fascinating name of 
Birnam, at the base of a hill, beside a little town; 
and it is indeed the very Birnam Wood of Shake- 
speare's " Macbeth." Even Dunsinane (pronounced 
in this countryside, in defiance of Shakespeare, 
" Dunsinnun," with the accent on the second sylla- 
ble) is not so very far away, it being only some ten 
miles in an air line, but quite too far for the tree- 
carrying episode. Birnam Wood is still a charming 
bit of woodland which is reputed to have been a great 
oak forest ; but not many of the oaks remain ; in fact, 
perhaps not more than one or two of the mighty mon- 
archs of the past. 

At Dunkeld we did not go to see the slender sights 
of the place, which consist of a park, a bit of an old 
cathedral, a hermitage and a considerable number of 
old larch trees, although we should have been per- 
mitted to enter and see all this on payment of a shill- 
ing apiece to an agent of John James Hugh Henry 
Stewart-Murray, K.T., Duke of Atholl and Earl 
Strange. We were inclined to do this, but we had 
been paying levies to so many dukes — including the 
bill at our hotel in London, which was owned by a 
duke — that we had to draw the line somewhere. 
(Down in Melrose we had paid sixpence to the Duke 
of Buccleuch every time we wanted to look at the 



284 FOUR ON A TOUR 

abbey, but we did not in the least object to that, for 
such a famous place, but it surprised us to find that 
any of the townsfolk in Melrose who wished to visit 
the graves of their own ancestors in the abbey grounds 
had similarly to pay this price.) 

We run through Dunkeld, which is just an ordi- 
nary, pleasant town, and the road, which has been 
practically level along the riverside, now begins to 
climb, and as it does it becomes more and more beau- 
tiful. There are rocks which rise abruptly, alter- 
nating with slopes climbing in slow dignity, and the 
road becomes superbly wooded, with heights in the 
far distance, somber and dark blue, and we keep 
catching glimpses of the gleaming water far below 
our sinuous road. 

We have found that there is a " Caledonia, stern 
and wild," but we have also learned that there is a 
Caledonia which is the very reverse of stern and wild, 
and the combination and alternation are very fas- 
cinating, indeed; and we are finding to-day, as we 
go on farther into the Highland country, that the 
roads average quite as high a degree of excellence 
as they do in most other parts not only of Scotland, 
but of England. We had anticipated that to travel 
in the Highlands would mean a great deal of rough, 
irregular road; and there is really some of that kind 
of road; but, on the other hand, one may travel for 
days through the most beautiful and grand High- 
land country and find roads that are practically per- 
fection, for they are mainly built through mountain 
passes or by the sides of the lochs and streams. And 
many Highland roads average much more of level- 
ness than do the roads in most parts of supposedly 
level England! 

We found it somewhat colder in Scotland than in 
England, but there was really not a great amount of 
difference in the countries in this respect; in both 



HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 285 

it was quite necessary to have overcoats and rugs 
with us; and this showed us, too, that it would have 
been a mistake to begin our tour earlier in May than 
we did, for it would probably have been too cold for 
real comfort. As it was, we never had a particle of 
real discomfort from cold, but we were properly pre- 
pared with wraps. 

We go on through a magnificent beech woods rich 
with splendid fields of fern, with ever the river glint- 
ing far below and with ever the heights rising splen- 
didly above us, and then the road goes dropping 
down to the very level of the river and continues in 
wooded beauty through not only the characteristic 
beeches, but past great numbers of oaks, birches, 
pines and rowans. 

The Tay swings to the west, but we are to run for 
a few miles to the northward and shall then come 
back and again follow its course; and the road leads 
us along the hurrying Tummel, and far up here we 
run into the attractive, up-to-date mountain resort of 
Pitlochry, and here the gasoline supply is replenished, 
and we anticipate much higher prices up here in the 
Highlands, but are surprised to find that it is only 
a few cents more a gallon than elsewhere. 

The entire matter of handling gasoline is another 
striking example of the power of trusts in Great 
Britain, for the prices are practically fixed through- 
out the country ; gasoline is sold in two grades, No. 1 
and No. 2, but it is a mistake to use the second grade, 
which is only four cents a gallon cheaper; the better 
grade, which is cleaner and also gives more mileage, 
ranging from thirty-nine to forty-one cents a gallon, 
or, in distant places like Pitlochry, about forty-five 
cents. The English gallon, however, is a little larger 
than the American, but even so it makes gasoline cost 
about thirty-three or thirty-five cents a gallon by our 
measure — which is amazingly different from our own 



286 FOUR ON A TOUR 

home price of thirteen cents a gallon. However, the 
roads and grades are so excellent throughout Great 
Britain that they not only save expense in tires, but 
also save materially in the amount of gasoline con- 
sumed. Gasoline is sold in sealed cans, which are 
paid for if for any reason one wishes to carry a can 
with him, but the cans are redeemable at the fixed 
price paid for them at any one of the myriad gaso- 
line stations at Great Britain; and it is really an 
astonishingly good system. 

Beyond Pitlochry the road goes steadily climbing 
higher, and the mountains become wilder and more 
grand; we leave the car at the Tummel and follow a 
footpath beside another stream through a gorge that 
every moment becomes wilder and more beautiful — 
and this is the famous pass of Killiecrankie. The 
stream swirls by us in a strange brownness, for it is 
brown where it goes smoothly in treacherous glides, 
and its foam is brown where it breaks over the rocks, 
and it flows, a brown and crumpled band, between 
steep, high banks that are thick with trees and 
shrubs. 

On a high bit of land far in front of us, but for 
a long time invisible, is the spot where Dundee, more 
famous under the once-dreaded name of Claverhouse, 
waited for the English soldiers to appear; and when 
we approach the spot we climb steeply upward and 
great mountains tower superbly immediately behind 
his position, and everywhere are splendid masses of 
pinkish heather; for up here on this lofty land above 
the pass there is bareness of trees, and the scene be- 
comes one of grim beauty and loneliness. 

How vividly the picture of this battle, so famous 
in Scottish history, comes to us, as we look down 
into the beautiful and lonely pass hemmed in by 
these great mountains; and then the thought comes 
of how old America is, after all ! — for at the time this 



HIGHLANDS OF SCOTLAND 287 

battle was fought, which seems so long ago, the Way- 
side Inn was standing, and used as an inn, just out- 
side of Boston! 

From here we retrace our way to the little hamlet 
of Ballinluig, where we again follow up the valley 
of the Tay, which turns here to the westward and 
opens out into a sweet, broad loveliness with splendid 
peaks rising in the central distance. 

It is a level road through a splendid parklike coun- 
try. Here and there is a glimpse of a mansion ; here 
and there is a park gate and an avenue leading in by 
long lines of trees and indicating a mansion hidden 
with that comfortable skill and completeness that 
mark the ability of the British to hide their homes 
when they wish to, as they so often do. Seldom do 
we see a humble home. It is a region that is remind- 
ful of riches. 

The broad river is full of fish that must not be 
caught; grouse and long- tailed pheasants that must 
not be shot fly across the fields ; rabbits that must not 
be killed are running about by scores and scores with 
impunity; the hillsides and fields are rich with trees 
that indicate shelter and firewood; now and then are 
seen sleek cattle; and once a liveried servant passes 
us, leading a fine pet dog; — then suddenly, around 
a bend, we come upon some more of the homeless 
folk who are scattered in such numbers over the roads 
of Great Britain. We have seen homeless men be- 
fore; even more frequently we have seen men and 
women, and once in a while a man and woman with 
one or two children ; but this time we meet a man and 
a woman with a family of half a dozen. They travel, 
they tell us, on some days fourteen or fifteen miles; 
their two-wheeled cart is for the littlest or the weary; 
the man is a laborer and so is his eldest boy, and the 
mother also works when she gets the chance; often, 
so they say with eager faces, they are able to stay in a 



288 FOUR ON A TOUR 

place for two or three days at a time! They are 
brave, these people ; they are not of the trampers who 
will not work, nor do they beg. But their faces 
brighten as a little silver is given to the children, and 
we leave them with the feeling that all they need is a 
chance. 

Across the water we see little Aberfeldy, where 
a double row of Lombardy poplars stretches com- 
pletely across the level valley, and we are approach- 
ing Loch Tay, and one road leads to the left along 
the southern side of the loch and one to the right 
along the northern, and we choose the northern side, 
and on we go, with purple mountains rising in great 
peaks in the distance and with broad slopes mount- 
ing gradually on either side. 

The valley broadens into a great, green, treeless 
level and great bare heights confrontingly stand in 
our way, and we drive through a road, unexpectedly 
tunneled with greenery, and are at tiny Fortingal. 







At the Roman camp near Fortingal 




A Highland cottage with one thatched chimney 




By the ruins of Rob Roy's cottage 




On the road beside Loch Lomond 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 

LITTLE Fortingal, tucked against its great 
j mountain-side, is so clean and bright and new 
that it seems almost odd to associate it with 
age, in spite of the thatched roofs above the pretty 
fronts of most of its half a dozen or so houses. And 
it is another example of the many places that possess 
unexpected interest. Nor do we merely mean such 
things as its ancient bell, which is known to be six 
centuries old, nor its stone font, as ancient as Chris- 
tianity in Britain, nor even that in the little grave- 
yard of the little, modern church is one of the most 
ancient of trees; a yew-tree estimated by naturalists 
to be three thousand years old; a tree which, though 
now dying, is dying slowly and each year continues 
to put forth fresh green tips. For most interesting 
of all is the legendary connection of Fortingal with 
Rome and with Christianity. 

In the reign of Augustus Caesar ambassadors were 
sent to many a distant region of the world to dis- 
cuss world-peace, and, so ancient stories have for cen- 
turies told, one embassy of noble Romans who took 
their wives with them for the pleasant jaunt in dis- 
tant regions, went to Scotland, and finding that the 
king, Metallanus, was absent hunting in the north, 
they followed him and found him on Loch Tay; and 
here, so the story has it, a son was born to the wife 
of one of the ambassadors — a son who was to grow 
up and have a great deal to do with the Christian Era, 
which began when the old yew-tree here was one 

389 



290 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



thousand years old ; for this child of a distant Roman 
was Pontius Pilate. 

Such a story cannot, of course, be proven. But 
likewise it cannot be denied. We set it down as an 
interesting centuries-old legend. But it certainly is 
very curious to think of the possibility of Pilate hav- 
ing opened his eyes upon the world here beside the 
Tay, with these brooding mountains rising so steep 
and high and bare. 

A little beyond Fortingal is the site of an ancient 
Roman camp — what wonderful people those Romans 
were, to come with their camps and their legions so 
far up here as these Scotch mountains ! — and trenches 
and pretorium are still clearly marked, and flowers 
in great variety of kind and color grow all over the 
field. But this camp has nothing to do with the 
Pilate legend, as it is in date some two hundred years 
later than that time. 

We continue along the river and in a few miles 
come to where it widens into a loch; a beautiful 
stretch of water, nestling among mountains; a long 
and sinuous lake twisting on among the heights for 
miles ; and we run beside it with ever-changing views 
of beauty and of grandeur. 

At length, toward the end of the lake, we see 
mountains grouped formidably in our path, and we 
pass cottages with not only thatched roofs, but even 
with the very chimneys thatched! — and the smoke 
coming out shows that these ancient thatched chim- 
neys are actually used! And the road makes final 
twists and turns and deviousnesses of beauty, and we 
stop for the night, for we find a little inn here at 
the head of the lake. It is late, but it does not seem 
so, for it is still daylight, and after dinner we start 
out for a daylight stroll, although it is ten o'clock at 
night; and at eleven o'clock it is still light, but be- 
ginning to darken. 



AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 291 

Dawn comes early here ; but, although the inn peo- 
ple went to bed last night in daylight, while we were 
out walking, there is no thought of breakfast before 
the customary British half-past eight. 

Although there are not so many wayside flowers 
hereabouts, the village gardens are a revel of glory 
with honeysuckle, larkspurs, roses and orange lilies. 
We leave Loch Tay through the little village of 
Killin, over a bridge across the Dochart, and the 
water of the narrow river goes surging over ledges 
of rocks, and pine trees hang pictorially over the wa- 
ter, and a line of white cottages, set flush with the 
road, add to the view, and marvelously beautiful 
mountains rise close at hand, and as we leave we look 
back in admiration at this superb line of heights ; and 
we go on by the side of the river, which has become 
suddenly quiet and peaceful above the rocks, and in 
front of us rise other splendid towering heights. No- 
where on the journey thus far have we been in such 
a lovely spot, and it is pleasant to think that we are in 
such splendid beauty on the Fourth of July! 

Ear in the distance rises Ben More, lofty and som- 
ber and proud and with snow-touched summit. We 
go on through a region of wild, bare, treeless gran- 
deur; and we see great horned Highland cattle star- 
ing at us from unf enced fields, and once in a while we 
come to a blackened stone cottage with thatched roof 
and again with one of those surprising thatched 
chimneys, and one cottager, who asks us in, shows 
us that his thatch-topped chimney is actually lined 
with wood. The only possible explanation that oc- 
curs to us of how these buildings escape fire for gen- 
erations is that this is a peat-burning country; but 
even that does not do away with the danger and the 
wonder of it. 

At length we come to the foot of towering Ben 
More, and on a bit of level not far above the road 



292 FOUR ON A TOUR 

there still stands, in absolute solitude, a fragment of 
stone cottage; a gable end, a couple of rude fire- 
places, a trifle of ruined wall; and the interior of the 
cottage is one solid mass of nettles. In this cottage 
lived for a time the famous Rob Roy MacGregor, 
head of a ferociously proscribed and persecuted clan, 
and he fled from here and his cottage was burned, 
but the scattered inhabitants still know it as Rob 
Roy's home. A pair of curlews fly up from their nest 
within it as we approach and scream wildly over our 
heads; a tiny mountain brook ripples close by; and 
all else is great, bleak immensity. 

Here the solitude and the beauty so tempt us that 
we lie down for a while in the bright sun on the soft, 
springy, fragrant heather and look up at the tall 
mountains rising in the sky and off at the sweeping 
views; but soon we are on our way again, and now 
it is through sweetness as well as grandeur, and we 
come to Crianlarich, a little village and railroad sta- 
tion set here as if to show that a place may be unat- 
tractive even in the midst of grandeur and beauty. 
From here the road forks, one branch going to the 
westward and the other south toward Loch Lomond, 
and we chose the southern branch, and it leads us be- 
tween splendid heights for miles and miles, with 
slopes and valleys rich with heather and with tufts 
of yellow gorse, and with little rivulets rushing wildly 
down the mountainsides and often tumbling in white, 
dashing waterfalls that make foamy streaks among 
the rocks and heather — it is a wonderfully beautiful 
road, and never could there be finer, cleaner and more 
bracing air. 

We pass a field covered thick with white sea- 
gulls, although we are far from the sea; and in a 
little while Loch Lomond comes into view, a beauti- 
ful length of water lying superbly among superb 
mountains. 



AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 293 

We stop at Ardlui, at the head of the lake, where 
there is a good hotel, and we have luncheon here and 
leave the car in the garage and go aboard a little 
steamer — not large enough for a motor itself, and 
so no motors can cross Loch Lomond — and we take 
a ride on the lake, and a delightful and superb ride 
it is, with the great heights holding the winding wa- 
ter in their hollow. We get off at Inversnaid, and 
here we are in the thick of Highland tourist travel, in 
contrast to the miles of lonely mountain road over 
which we have just come, and here we take one of 
several coaches filling up to drive to Loch Katrine, 
five miles away; a little lake of sheer loveliness, all 
greens and blues and purples in the midst of its 
beautiful heather-covered mountains. 

It makes a delightful interlude, this boating and 
coaching to a place beautiful in itself and noteworthy 
as the scene of " The Lady of the Lake " ; and we 
realize, too, one of the changes that have come with 
motor cars, and that is, that in the past coaches with 
their scarlet-coated drivers have stood for luxury and 
charm of travel, but that now they seem very slow 
even for going through a beautiful country, and that 
one misses not only the swiftness of the motor car 
but its smoothness and ease. 

We returned to Inversnaid, a place curiously Swiss 
in aspect, with its mountain hotel and thronging tour- 
ists, and we had tea there, with the bright, gossipy, 
eager, largely American throng ; and it was pleasant 
to meet pleasant Americans on the Fourth. Very 
few of either the English or Americans were going 
to the north of the lake, as this is an hour's stopping- 
point almost altogether for travelers on rapid trips 
between Glasgow and Edinburgh. 

We returned to Ardlui, and the car was taken 
from the garage, and we turned our faces south- 
ward for a drive of twenty-five miles along the en- 



294 FOUR ON A TOUR 

tire length of Loch Lomond, the largest of British 
lakes. 

That ride remains in our memory as one of the 
supreme impressions of the tour. We found, almost 
from the beginning of it, that, as Loch Katrine is a 
little lake of supreme loveliness, so Loch Lomond is 
a large lake of supreme loveliness ; and the loveliness 
is ever changing in character. 

This road down the western side of the lake — there 
is no road down the other side — is in itself a perfect 
piece of road-making, cut as it is out of the very rock, 
just above the surface of the water, so that always 
the water goes shimmering away from our very 
wheels or else is close at hand and seen through wav- 
ing bracken or shrubs, and always great heights go 
towering, with their rocks and solitudes, immediately 
from our side, and always, across the widening and 
narrowing lake, is another line of splendid moun- 
tains. Ben Lomond (a name vaguely rich in the 
vaguest of memories) rises majestically, with mist 
hovering vaguely around its summit, and our road 
goes on, with infinite roundings and bendings which 
follow the bendings and windings of the shore as it 
curves at the foot of the mountains ; and once it bends 
with a bending beach away, and once — and it seems 
more impressive than as if this had happened many 
times — a splendid wild bird, huge and brown, with 
feathered feet (it seemed to fit the name of ptarmi- 
gan, but perhaps it was not one), mounted swiftly 
from the waterside in a long-slanting flight as if aim- 
ing at one of the summits. It was typical of the 
wild fascination of it all. 

It is a ride of lonely grandeur, of inexhaustible 
beauty ; rarely is there a house of any sort and seldom 
do we even pass a motor car and never a horse; and 
toward the end the lake goes broadening out in a de- 
lightful conglomeration of water and dotted islands, 



AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 295 

with the great mountains sinking into finely rounded 
hills. 

From here we go southward into a region sprin- 
kled with beautiful private estates, and thus on 
through a lowland country to Dumbarton, still 
frowned over by its great Clyde-set castled rock. It 
is a crowded city, and gives an impression of uneasy 
discomfort. It was Saturday evening, and crowds, 
as is usual in Britain, were thronging roadway and 
sidewalk alike; and we noticed quite a sprinkling of 
white-coated soldiers who were both in tartans and 
intoxicated — that is, they were all in tartans and 
quite a number were intoxicated. 

It was still so light and Dumbarton was so unat- 
tractive that we ran on to Glasgow, reaching that city 
after nine o'clock through a long manufacturing and 
ship-building series of suburbs. We noticed, as we 
approached the city, by far the largest manufactur- 
ing establishment we had seen anywhere in Great 
Britain, and not until we had commented on this fact 
did we see in the twilight that it had on it the name 
of an American sewing machine! 

Although it was late, the Glasgow streets were 
crowded with humming, buzzing, moving masses of 
people. There were street preachers; there were 
young men singing and dancing; there was a great 
deal of drinking; there were many women carrying 
babies; there were young men and their sweethearts 
going into cheap and respectable little restaurants; 
there were numerous drunken men; and the police- 
men, of whom there were many to be seen, went 
always in pairs or even three together, which grimly 
showed what dangers were seething beneath the 
surface. 

There were corporation-owned tram-cars, double- 
deckers, and it amused us hugely to notice on their 
fronts such signs as " Gang warily " and " Always 



296 FOUR ON A TOUR 

Face Forward : Proverbs 3d Chapter, 23d Verse " — 
and the Scotch, supposedly a Bible-reading folk, are 
expected to know that this means: " Then shalt thou 
walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stum- 
ble." We looked this up ourselves in the Bible sup- 
plied to each room in the hotel, for, though they 
expect their own people to know the Bible, perhaps 
they do not expect that knowledge from visitors. 

As we motored about the city the next morning, 
we found ourselves forced most carefully to follow 
the " gang warily " admonition, for the streets were 
littered with fragments of broken bottles; a Sunday- 
morning comment on a Glasgow Saturday night. 
But the city distinctly gives the impression of a pros- 
perous and busy place. 

There are extensive university buildings and art 
galleries, which do not particularly attract in appear- 
ance; and we took a look at the altered and "re- 
stored " cathedral, which is a striking example of 
what can be done if a city is determined to take the 
beauty from an old building; for there is now such 
a mixture of poor architecture showing as makes the 
name of the patron saint, St. Mungo, seem vaguely 
to fit the general aspect. 

Without feeling frivolous, as all Glasgow was go- 
ing to church, it did mildly amuse us to read a sign, 
" Teeth stopped and scaled " ; and of course we mo- 
tored to the waterside and along by the wharves and 
the shipbuilding yards, and then, in a gray forenoon, 
with a drizzly rain threatening but not fulfilling its 
threat, we were across the Clyde and into a bold, bare, 
rolling, morasslike, boggy, featureless country over 
which it was a pleasure to go quickly; and perhaps 
the overcast sky did add to the effect of dreariness. 

At one spot we did stop, however, and this was 
because, off in a lonely bog, or moss as it would here 
be called, stood a solitary monument which demanded 



AMONG THE SCOTTISH LAKES 297 

investigation. By bog-trotting warily the monument 
was reached with dry feet, but it was only to find that 
the shaft had been raised to the memory of the wife 
of a member of Parliament who had wished for burial 
here; and as this was stated on the monument, in- 
cluding the fact of the husband's being a Parliament 
man, it was not unkind to think that the wife had 
chosen loneliness even in death rather than speeches. 
By this road we reached Kilmarnock and found not 
a willow in the place. But we did find a most excel- 
lent Sunday-noon dinner, just as ready as if we had 
ordered it for that particular time. 

In the dozen miles from Kilmarnock to Ayr the 
country changes its uninteresting character and be- 
comes delightful, and the roadbed itself, which has 
been not quite up to the average, becomes smooth 
and excellent; and there are rich farms with large 
clusters of well-kept farm buildings around the farm- 
houses, and there are great pastures dotted with white 
and brown-red cattle, beasts with very large faces, 
which we take to be the famous Ayrshires; and by 
fair woodland and hedges and now and then a shin- 
ing glimpse of the sea we come to Ayr. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

BY AFTON WATER AND GRETNA GREEN 

AYR itself is a plain and ordinary town, through 
which we pass without stopping, and soon we 
'enter a superb avenue of old beeches with 
branches so thickly crossing and interlacing overhead 
as distinctly to give a twilight effect to the road even 
in mid-day, and as Tarn o' Shanter is supposed to 
have gone through this road on his famous fateful 
night, it is small wonder that he was ready for 
experiences. 

Emerging from this shaded stretch, we are quickly 
in the little village of Alloway, where Burns was 
born, and where the cottage itself is still standing; 
a plain, humble little place of plastered clay with a 
thatched roof; now newly plastered and revamped, 
and piously closed for Sunday. How this would have 
amused Burns! 

But beyond being interested in seeing this humble 
place and thereby understanding how very far Burns 
mounted to his fame, we are interested in him en- 
tirely in his out-of-door aspect, for the only Burns 
of importance is the out-of-door Burns. Near his 
home is the ruined little Alloway Kirk, its crumbling 
walls so hung with ivy and jessamine, so moldering 
in its heavy green shade, and with its close-packed old 
gravestones so covered thick with moss, as to seem 
a ghostly place even in daylight and to be worthy of 
better ghosts than his unimpressive witches. But 
almost immediately beyond this we come upon one of 
the places that stand for the greatness of Burns, 
for here we come to the Doon. 

298 



BY AFTON WATER 299 

The greatness of Burns is in his songs; from his 
boyhood he conned and crooned the ancient and al- 
most forgotten tunes of Scotland and his passionate 
love for those wild, sweet airs was the sole sincerity 
of his life. He had genius for writing songs and he 
wrote them to lilt to those vanishing airs of the past. 
He has so set forth such things as the banks and braes 
of bonnie Doon, and the gently-flowing Afton, as 
to make them loved and remembered forever by the 
world. And so it was beside the Doon and the Afton 
that we looked for Burns. 

The Doon is really so lovely! And we like Burns 
the better that he immortalized a stream that is so 
near the bare baldness of his birthplace and village. 
An old stone bridge arches itself across the water, 
and beneath the bridge goes softly rippling the stream 
into whose name he has forever put music. It is a 
lovely spot, and trees grow thickly and lean far for- 
ward over the very water itself. The fair-blooming 
banks of the poet's time are just as fair to-day; and 
that one side of the river, immediately below the 
bridge, is a park, and that it is a favorite Sunday- 
afternoon resort for the people of Ayr, has not taken 
away the delicate beauty of the scene. 

From the banks of the Doon we ran back two or 
three miles to much-monumented Ayr and, without 
going through the center of the town, struck to the 
eastward by a fine road through a charming land, a 
rich grazing country, with farm buildings clustered 
prosperously. On the whole, this is the most level 
countryside that we have found in Scotland, but 
even this is far from being really level, for it is softly 
rolling and now and again offers the unexpectedness 
of a really widespread view of miles, to low hills dim 
in the distant haze. A drizzle comes on, but soon 
stops, and we go on with a cold wind and under a 
sunless sky, but still with a sense of going through 



300 FOUR ON A TOUR 

a cheerful country; and again and again there is the 
effect of cottages whitewashed to brilliancy set in the 
midst of very green fields. 

Thus we come in sixteen miles to Cumnock, and 
here we swing southeast and in five miles more reach 
New Cumnock, and at New Cumnock is the Afton, 
for it flows through the edge of the town. 

But we do not need to remember the Afton by its 
village aspect; for beside the stream at the village 
edge we met the delightful wife of the village doctor, 
and she loved the Afton, flowing as it did past her 
own dooryard, and she was delightedly interested to 
find that her Afton was famous — we were the only 
strangers she had ever heard of who had sought for 
the Afton — and, understanding that we wanted to 
see it in more than village surroundings, she pointed 
out a road by which we could come upon its course 
in perfect wildness; and two or three miles from the 
village we had the joy of discovering the river where 
it looked as it looked when Burns sang of it. 

Here Afton Water is a murmuring stream of love- 
liness, flowing through a tiny glen thick-sheltered 
with close-growing trees and flowing out from among 
bare-topped rounding hills. It is a stream of alter- 
nate smoothness and rock-filled shallows, but it is 
always a stream of gentleness. Its pleasant banks, 
its green valley, even the wild-whistling blackbirds in 
their thorny den — here it is just as Burns saw it; and 
we know how beautifully a little earlier in the spring 
the poet's primroses were blossoming wild in these 
woodlands. It is a place to rest by; and never was 
the spirit of a spot more adequately expressed than 
by the words of " Sweet Afton." Nowhere in Scot- 
land have we seen the grass so long, the clover so 
thick, the fields more beautiful with wild flowers or 
more beautifully bordered by trees. 

Leaving New Cumnock and the vale of Afton be- 



BY AFTON WATER 301 

hind us, we strike into the valley of the river Nith, 
and follow a winding road that follows the broad 
and pleasant windings of the stream. In a few miles 
we come to Sanquhar, a plain and ordinary town, but 
a monument which stands where once stood the town 
cross commemorates events that make this ordinary- 
seeming place one of brave importance to the Scotch 
themselves ; for this town is in the heart of the region 
that was the center of the deadly religious persecu- 
tion of the Covenanters not much over two centuries 
ago, and the monument keeps in mind that two dif- 
ferent declarations were published here, in " the kill- 
ing time," as the inscription, with grim simplicity, 
has it. 

And unexpectedly, after passing through this now 
humdrum place, there comes into sight, not far 
away, the ruin of a stately castle built in the long 
ago to watch here in Nithdale; and we do not need 
to know its history; it is enough that it rises up for 
us out of the distant past and sinks vaguely into the 
past again. 

By an attractive road we continue down the val- 
ley, which holds and increases its pleasant charm as 
it broadens gently in its mildly twisting course. It 
was a run of a dozen miles or more from gloomy 
Sanquhar to Thornhill, where we planned to spend 
the night; a dozen miles of picturesque motoring be- 
side the Nith as it went wandering onward with a 
sort of careless grace. The ever-changing landscape 
was ever sweet in its pictorially pastoral attractive- 
ness. The mellowness of late afternoon lay over the 
hushed valley. The air came mild and sweet. In 
all, Nithdale showed itself to us as one of the most 
softly beautiful valleys in Great Britain. 

Approaching Thornhill, we turned aside before 
entering the village, to run through an estate of the 
Duke of Buccleuch. It is not his most important 



302 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



place; he may possibly come here for a couple of 
months in the shooting season; he owns here, as we 
are told, a trifle of land some twenty-six miles long 
and from four to six miles wide, including of course 
the very river itself and any houses or villages that 
may happen to come within this scope; and he freely 
permits strangers to drive for miles through even this 
private park, and we take a look at the huge and 
costly pile, standing in square and tower-cornered 
impressiveness, built two centuries ago by a preced- 
ing ducal owner; and we find it not particularly fine 
in spite of its dignity of size and the great name of 
its designer, Inigo Jones. 

We were agreeably astonished, in little Thornhill, 
far up there in an out-of-the-way and very sparsely 
settled corner of the world, to find a delightful and 
picturesquely furnished inn, equipped with gas and 
telegraph and telephone and plumbing. 

They gave us French bread for dinner and even a 
wood-pigeon pasty. And this pasty was out of the 
land of romance — it was baked in a rectangular deep 
dish two feet long and more than a foot in width 
and it seemed as if there were as many wood pigeons 
in its depths as there were in the great rhyme-famous 
pie of the blackbirds ; and the explanation of all this 
is that this is a shooting district and that all those 
who secure the privilege to shoot are not house- 
guests of the duke, so that a good inn has a natural 
place here. 

In the morning, this entire region being one of 
song inspiration, we could not go southward without 
first going to the home of one in honor of whose 
charms was composed a song so sweet and so famous 
that all the world knows her name; for the name is 
Annie Laurie. 

So we took a side road leading off to Maxwellton; 
which is not at all the Maxwelltown near Dumfries, 






BY AFTON WATER 303 

some fifteen miles to the southward; and the road 
led for five miles through the heart of a delightful 
region to Maxwellton House; a fine old place, long 
ago burned and partly rebuilt; a largish white house 
of many gables, looking down into a charmingly 
grassed and wooded and flowered swale. 

Within the house the very room of Annie Laurie 
is still preserved, and among the old and interest- 
ing portraits of admirals and generals of the Laurie 
family, on the walls of this older portion of the house, 
is a two-centuries-old painting which is supposed to 
be that of Annie Laurie herself, in all the sweetness 
of her beauty. We were delightfully received here. 
The master of the house, a Laurie, is ninety-two 
years old, but he sent word to show us everything, 
with his regrets that his blindness made it impossi- 
ble to receive us in person. — And when his end comes 
Death will have a gentleman for a companion. 

We motored about this immediate country for 
quite a number of miles, for the song is right in its 
declaration that Maxwellton's braes are bonnie. It 
is everywhere a charming neighborhood, and even the 
little village of Moniave, set among the hills not far 
away, has a quaint, flower-bedecked, thrifty, little 
charm of its own; this Moniave being the village of 
the ugly named farm of Craigenputtock, up a very 
rough stone road, where Carlyle for a time lived and 
where our own Emerson visited him and where Jane 
Welsh Carlyle lamented for the world the unpleas- 
antness of it all. It is curious thus to notice what 
differences come from different attitudes of mind and 
different possibilities of enjoyment, and that braes 
may be bonnie or the reverse, according to the indi- 
vidual; and in all of our journeying we have seldom 
been more pleased than in finding, in this thoroughly 
delightful region, the home and the room and the 
portrait of the heroine of one of the sweetest of old 



304 FOUR ON A TOUR 

songs, and also in finding that it is under her own 
name that Annie Laurie is immortalized and that 
her memory is still vividly cherished here. 

We had hoped, when at Afton Water, to see the 
" green-crested lapwing," because to Burns it meant 
part of this countryside, and we actually see it here 
at Maxwellton in the same general region ; a slender- 
legged bird, high crested and bluey-gray in general 
color, rising from the clipped laurestines of Maxwell- 
ton House. 

But even a charming region like this could not 
continue to hold us, and we took up our journey 
southward. There are fine private estates hereabouts ; 
it is all a parklike country even when it is but rich 
pasture land, with Ayrshire cattle picturesquely 
speckling the fields; but in a few miles after regain- 
ing the main road we are in a barer region, and we 
turn up a narrow lane for some two miles and come 
to the ruined tower of Lag, dismally notorious on 
account of Covenanting cruelties and famous through 
being the scene of " Wandering Willie's Tale " ; that 
grim bit out of Scott's imagination which seems to 
have been suggestive of Hawthorne's grim story of 
" Young Goodman Brown." The tower is a stone 
shell standing on a little knoll above a farmstead, and 
is entirely hidden by dark trees. 

Again we go motoring southward, still following 
the river Nith, and come to the old town of Dum- 
fries; a busy but rather ordinary sort of place; and 
over in a narrow street in the poorer quarter of the 
town is the depressing little house where Burns spent 
his last years. His was not much of a rise in worldly 
circumstance; his life reached from one little cottage 
to another little cottage strangely like it; it was but 
a span from poverty to poverty. But between those 
cottages he conquered the world. 

Burns is buried near this Dumfries cottage in a 



BY AFTON WATER 305 

crowded churchyard surrounded close by humble 
homes, and in a part of the graveyard where the 
stones are proudly marked " mason," " spirit mer- 
chant," 'baker," ''carpenter" and so on; and there 
has been erected for him there a tomb that is large 
and ornate. 

From Dumfries we ran by a cross road, through 
pleasant country, toward the eastward, and just as 
we were saying to ourselves that this was an en- 
tirely featureless tract we came to the stern ruin of 
an ancient castle — we did not stop to find what it was 
— and the road opened upon a sweeping view, with 
mountains standing high in the distance, and we came 
to an agreeable little lake with an agreeable little 
town beside it, whose people had recently put up 
both a statue of Bruce and a public fountain; and 
it was a pleasure to see that a community could be 
at the same time so practical as to build a fountain 
and so sentimental as to put up a statue to a hero of 
six centuries ago. 

We reach Lockerbie and here turn southward and 
in a few miles are in Ecclefechan, a bare little town 
of bare little stone houses without dooryards. In 
one of the few streets a dirty little stream runs by 
the side of the road, as far as possible a contrast to 
what a little Scotch stream may be, and looking across 
this is the bare, dirty-white, two-family cottage where 
Thomas Carlyle was born ; a dour, fierce man coming 
naturally out of this dour, bare village. Like Burns, 
he climbed high from poverty, but unlike Burns he 
gained friends and station; but he was brought back 
to this bare little place to be buried in a desolate 
graveyard whose forbidding wall is stuck with bills 
and which is centered by a dismal, dull-red church; 
and on the big, plain, brown stone under which he 
rests is the word " Humilitate " — the strangest of 
words to apply to a man who of all things never knew 



306 FOUR ON A TOUR 

humility. Or does it mean that it took death to hum- 
ble him? 

We remembered, as we motored out of Eccle- 
fechan, one of the oddest of literary coincidences, 
which was that Burns was in Ecclefechan in the very 
same year in which Carlyle was born there, and that 
he wrote of the town as " the unfortunate, wicked 
little village of Ecclefechan." 

From here we go on with the pleasantest antici- 
pation, for we are running to Gretna Green, and as 
we go spinning along we feel a salt wind which comes 
stinging into our faces and we catch glimpses of 
gleaming Solway Firth and we thrill to remember 
that into that water John Paul Jones sailed with 
his American ships far back in the brave Revolution- 
ary days. 

A bright and pleasant but modern-looking little 
place is Gretna Green, and humdrum even without 
thinking of its own contrast with its mass of romance. 
Within the village we find amusing internecine war- 
fare; it is a village divided against itself, for each 
house seems to claim against every other house that 
it alone was the original marrying spot, and before 
long the visitor is reduced to fixing upon the one he 
would have fancied for himself or else to thinking 
that there were so many romantic marriages there 
that they just divided them up generally among the 
houses. The claim made for one house particularly 
interested us: "It was just runaway royalties that 
was married here; and of course it was only foreign 
royalties " — and we shall never know just what for- 
eign royalties fled to Gretna Green! 

The house which interested us most was a once- 
while toll-house, an old white house, than which noth- 
ing could be more glaringly white; in fact, the dif- 
ference between the country cottages of this entire 
region has been that, whereas some are whitewashed 



BY AFTON WATER 307 

impossibly white, the others are whitewashed still 
whiter! 

Close beside this once-while toll-house is a little 
stream, crossed by a stone bridge against which stands 
a clump of trees, and in the middle of the bridge our 
car was halted with the front seat in England and 
the rear seat in Scotland! But this international 
separation did not long continue, and we went on 
with the blue water of Solway close on our right and 
broad white sands of the Solway stretching into the 
distance, and we saw clouds of light yellow dust 
blown away from the lonely sands. 

And now the road ran on through a dreary heath 
covered with faint blossoming heather and with blue- 
berries, except for the places where peat is dug and 
stacked; for much of the heath is a dryish bog from 
which peat is cut for fuel ; and the few scattered trees 
are white birches. 

It did not seem, however, as if we were really in 
England until we had gone eight or nine miles 
farther and reached Carlisle ; for one always thinks of 
Carlisle as being literally on the border line. We 
approached this city with a great deal of interest, 
on account of its very ancient memories, but found 
it to be a city of memories alone, except for its castle, 
which is to a great extent modernized and is a bar- 
racks for soldiers, and its cathedral, which has been 
so altered as to look neither old nor interesting, and 
a few old houses alongside of a few built in an un- 
successful effort to look old; but there was an at- 
tractive approach to the city and the place itself 
struck us as businesslike; and the soldiers of the 
garrison pleasantly brighten the streets. It was in- 
teresting to walk along the old battlements of the 
castle, and to look from these battlements far across 
the plain; and as we left the castle the evening fan- 
fare was sounded to mark the closing hour, and there 



308 FOUR ON A TOUR 

was a clanking of arms as the night guard was set, 
and we felt vaguely the fascination of the Carlisle 
of our fancy; but we looked about us and saw that 
the old Carlisle had really gone, and thereupon we 
motored on still farther into England. 

It is a perfect road for the eighteen miles to 
Penrith, through a country of rising hills; and we 
are in Cumberland. A line of mountains marches 
into view on the western horizon. It is after seven 
o'clock and the air is of a fine mellow clearness. The 
mountains assume a finer and more beautiful aspect 
and rise more nobly against the sky as we watch them 
from our road, which runs along a high level, with a 
great sweeping valley down below. 

Penrith is itself a rather modern-seeming town 
which gives an impression of being all hotels; but 
curiously tucked out of sight at the very edge of the 
single busy street is a picturesque old church, and 
behind the line of buildings on the other side of the 
street are the ruins of the ancient red castle. 

We had noticed, motoring into Penrith, a little 
broken glass in the roadway; one of the not over 
half a dozen times in the entire three thousand miles, 
with the exception of the city of Glasgow; and we 
had come to realize that the glassless roads were due 
in the first place to the thriftiness of the British in 
not throwing away bottles and then to the patrol 
service of the great automobile clubs, and very much 
indeed to the fact that the glass milk bottles which 
so litter our own roads seem to be unknown in Eng- 
land, the entire country having its milk unsanitarily 
handled through brass faucets from metal tanks, and 
finally to the fact that the roads of England run to 
so great an extent through uninhabited country that 
there are no people there to scatter debris of any 
kind. 

That the roads themselves are so uniformly good 




The banks and braes of bonnie Doon 




" Flow gently, sweet Afton " 




Maxwellton House, the home of Annie Laurie 




The old toll-house, Gretna Green, at the Scotch-English 
border line 



BY AFTON WATER 309 

is due to careful making, to the cheapness of hand 
labor, to the use of tar as a binder (and this is to a 
great extent coming in) and to the fact that they 
have no intense heaving frosts, almost never a tor- 
rential rain and never that destructive condition, a 
prolonged drought. Also, the roads are kept neatly 
mended in the spots where they wear through and 
their drainage is watched and seen to, and when it is 
added to all this that they have been building these 
roads for a great many years and that there is noth- 
ing like the automobile traffic or traffic of any kind 
that American macadam roads bear, it will be some- 
what understood why the British roads are so fine. 
Although the use of motor cars is increasing over 
there, they are not gaining anything like the vogue 
of America; not only do they pay exorbitantly for 
gasoline and for lubricating oil, but the cars them- 
selves are much more expensive for makes which, as 
acknowledged by the English themselves, are of no 
better quality. One popular-price car sells for one- 
third more in England than it does in the United 
States. In addition, each owner of a car in Great 
Britain is taxed from thirty to two hundred and ten 
dollars a year, according to horsepower. We, as vis- 
itors, temporary sojourners, had no tax to pay. 

One good point about motors in England is that 
almost all hotels outside the large cities give garage 
shelter for the cars of their guests overnight free of 
charge, and in the few places where there is a charge 
it is only a shilling. Washing and cleaning the cars, 
however, is likely to be a little dearer than in Amer- 
ica ; they are very slow about washing a car and have 
poor facilities for it. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE ENGLISH LAKES 

WE went to Penrith as the best place from 
which to enter the Lake Country from the 
north; and it was not the broken glass we 
had noticed on entering the town that made us, be- 
fore going to the lakes, first take a short run to Eden 
Hall, that place of a poetically shattered goblet: 
poetically only, for in spite of the poets it is under- 
stood to be still intact. 

Searching for Eden Hall and its goblet, we asked 
our way of a well-set-up young Englishman who 
came on horseback out of his park gates. He was 
politely curious as to what could have brought Ameri- 
cans in this direction from Penrith and to his own 
door. For it was not merely that we were travelers ; 
he himself had been in India, as an officer with his 
regiment, as he put it; but, really, what was there at 
Eden Hall? 

" Why, the Luck of Eden Hall." 

" Oh! — Yes — I think I have heard something 
about that ; — an old keepsake, isn't it ? But is it really 
famous? " 

Whereupon we told him that it was a very old 
crystal goblet, that had for generations been pre- 
ciously preserved by the Eden family because of its 
being bound up by tradition with their prosperity. 
And we knew of this old goblet, made in Venice and 
kept as an English heirloom, because it was written 
about by a German poet whose poem was translated 
by an American. 

"Fawncy!" And he repeated under his breath: 

310 



THE ENGLISH LAKES 311 

" Venice, England, Germany, America — and right 
here ! ' : And he pointed out the road and we soon 
came to Eden Hall, and found it to he a square- 
fronted mansion, somewhat Italian of aspect, and 
facing out over an Italian terrace with a big Italian- 
like garden; a fitting place for the housing of a pre- 
cious Italian goblet. 

The family were away ; the house was occupied by 
strangers; the goblet itself was locked in a safe of 
unusual strength: but even when the family are here 
it is very rarely indeed that it is shown. One ancient 
servitor of the family said that he had never seen 
it himself, but that he had always been told that his 
father had once had a glimpse of it, and another 
equally ancient family servitor said that it had never 
been shown since Queen Victoria had visited the place 
three-quarters of a century ago when she was Princess 
Victoria. 

In all, it was one of those curious experiences that 
give so much of interest, and in the course of the 
experience we had seen another unknown countryside. 
And from Eden Hall we did not immediately swing 
toward the lakes, but went on through a succession 
of narrow, twisting English lanes and lovely little 
hamlets, past high-set hedges or beside bordering 
banks and walls, and up and up our road gradually 
led us till we came out on a level summit, where we 
could look far off in all directions, except that on one 
side, two miles or so away, rose a solemn line of hills 
so dark blue as almost to be black. 

And where we had mounted by a final lane is a 
level field in which stands an enormous circle of 
Druid stones of varied sizes; smaller stones, these, 
than those of Stonehenge, though many of them are 
huge. The imagination cannot repeople this height; 
it has nothing to go by; it has just age and immensity 
of impression; it is one of those cases in which, as the 



312 FOUR ON A TOUR 

old lines aptly have it, " antiquity appears to have 
begun long after their primeval race was run." 
There are over sixty of these supposedly Druid 
stones still here, but it is evident from the spaces that 
there were originally even more ; and at one side there 
is the expected solitary monolith. 

There was still another place to go before respond- 
ing to the fascination of the nearby lakes, and this 
was the ruins of Brougham Castle; a ruin of great 
extent, a mass of red building on a low green knoll, 
which rises from beside a river of amber, speckled 
with white foam. The castle has a brave and distin- 
guished history and is still a brave and distinguished- 
looking ruin. The splendor falls on castle walls all 
over Great Britain, and it often seems a wonder that 
so many have been preserved. 

From here we are off, with the keenest expecta- 
tions, toward the English Lakes, and we just skirt 
Penrith in aiming for Ullswater, and we make a turn 
at a crossroads where the little village of Eamont 
Bridge has set up a monument which is unique among 
monuments, for it sets forth that four men of this 
hamlet, giving their names, went to the South Afri- 
can War, and that two of these men, naming them, 
were killed; and it thus gives as much glory to the 
two who risked their lives and were ready to be killed 
for their country as to the two who died. It was but 
a short run, through a delightful rolling country, be- 
fore we were at Ullswater, a beautiful stretch of 
water with mountains rising in a dark-blue group 
beyond it. We went on by a superb road beside the 
beautiful lake; a road of loveliness; and we found 
the lake itself characteristic of all this group of lakes, 
in that it is practically without flat levels between the 
edge of the water and the rising heights; that is to 
say, the lakes are literally held in the hollow of the 
mountains. 



THE ENGLISH LAKES 313 

We ran the entire length of the lake to Patterdale, 
and then back a few miles to the north to where the 
romantic little waterfall of Aira Force comes leaping 
down the mountainside, a white streak against the 
blackness of the rocks. But here we were even more 
interested in daffodils than in a fine waterfall, for 
it was at the very edge of the lake, at this spot, that 
the daffodils grew of which Wordsworth wrote his 
well-known and much-loved lines; it was right here 
that he saw the crowd, the host of golden daffodils, 
beside the lake, beneath the trees, fluttering and danc- 
ing in the breeze. 

But there was no sign of even a single daffodil. 
We were a little bit too late for them. And we saw 
not even one of their shrunken leaves to tell us where 
they grew. Whereupon an old road-mender, who was 
fortunately at that very spot, was asked if there were 
not in springtime many daffodils thereabouts. 

His old face brightened. " Yes, yes ! " he ex- 
claimed, eagerly; "they grow everywhere"; and he 
waved his arm comprehensively. 

Then of course he could show us precisely where 
some plants grew? And again came his eager assent, 
whereupon we were vastly pleased, and we all got 
out of the car, ready, with tire-irons and screwdriver, 
to assist the old man with his shovel in digging 
Wordsworth daffodils from Wordsworth's very spot ; 
for the old man himself was readily enlisted. It all 
seemed delightful, for the spot precisely fitted 
Wordsworth's lines in being not only beside the lake 
but beneath the trees. 

But, alas ! although we dug and delved and delved 
and dug at spot after spot pointed out by the opti- 
mistic old man, we found not a single bulb; it was a 
case, as another poet almost expressed it, where we 
found not a plant nor discovered a bulb, so we left 
them alone in their glory. 



314 FOUR ON A TOUR 

At this point, where a large tract has been secured 
for the permanent use and delight of the people, we 
left Ullswater, by a long mountain road of easy 
grades, with fine views of water and of heights, and 
then we went for miles across a mighty rolling coun- 
try, over a high road up among the mountains, with 
fields of buttercups and English daisies often beside 
us, and broad stretches of heather and moor and now 
and then a little walled farmlet and at times pretty 
hedges of wild rose, and then we would come to where 
there were no hedges at all, but only green pastures 
that swept away from the roadside to the mountains 
that rose above our lofty road. 

And thus we came to Keswick, but found it not 
only a crowded place, but one of far from attractive 
atmosphere ; but we were not in any way tied to Kes- 
wick and therein, as we have so often realized, lies 
one of the great advantages of motoring, for it was 
a mere matter of glancing rapidly at the place and 
at once leaving it; and close at hand was Derwent- 
water, for which we had come. 

The ride beside little Derwentwater was three miles 
of beauty; and there was grandeur, too, for there 
were some tremendous rocky cliffs rising nobly above 
the road; and we reached Lodore, and found it a 
pleasant little waterfall; although it must be admit- 
ted that Southey did exaggerate somewhat about it. 
But it is easily seen, just off the roadside, in the gar- 
den of a hotel where we sat at a little outdoor table 
and enjoyed a pleasantly served little feast as we 
looked back, sitting there, up the little lake and at 
its mountains and their reflections. While we ate 
near the foot of the fall one of us remarked that 
Southey's lines on Lodore were probably exag- 
gerated in an effort to excel the unknown poet, 
quoted by Samuel Rogers, whose delightful lines on 
the Falls of Lanark, with their " roaring and grum- 



THE ENGLISH LAKES 315 

bling and leaping and tumbling, and hopping and 
skipping and foaming and dripping," Southey so 
closely followed. 

We returned the short distance to Keswick, and 
left that place by a short but winding and very steep 
ascent which developed into a long and steady pull, 
and as the top was gained there was a splendid view 
of mountain peaks, massed and clustered, and par- 
ticularly notable and even distinguished were the 
lines of the bare, treeless mountain-tops serrated 
sharply against the sky. 

Amid mountain and cliff effects which became 
magnificent, we reached another of this delightful 
group of mountain-set lakes, and this was Thirlmere, 
a very lonely-set lake, and we chose a recently-built 
road down its western bank, understanding it to be 
a road with even more superb views than those from 
the road down its eastern shore ; and as we passed the 
fork we met a four-horse touring coach, with red- 
coated coachman and guard, northward bound to 
Keswick, and it added a touch of gayety and bright- 
ness to the beautiful but otherwise lonely scene. It 
is interesting to know that this little lake, absolutely 
unspoiled in itself and its surroundings, is the water 
supply for the city of Manchester, ninety-six miles 
away in an air line; and that city has built the 
perfectly-made and surfaced road over which we mo- 
tored beside the lake. 

It is a glorious ride and Helvellyn rises superbly 
from the water's edge. And, even though we cannot 
help remembering the absurdity of the great poet 
who made Helvellyn rhyme with " the eagle was 
yelling," that little absurdity served only to make the 
mountain seem a sort of friendly possession and did 
not in the slightest degree detract from the superb, 
bare dignity. 

Another few miles of glory and we are at the tiny 



316 FOUR OX A TOUR 

village of Grasmere, where the valley broadens out 
just before reaching the delightful little bit of water 
from which the town takes its name. We stayed 
here all night, and after dinner we walked out in 
the perfect evening light, following little paths that 
led up toward the towering mountains and feeling 
fascinated by the peaceful beauty of the scenes, the 
livable and lovable quality of it all ; it is a place to be 
buried in as well as to live in, and here beside little 
Grasmere Church is the grave of Wordsworth, the 
man more associated than any other with the fame 
of the Lake Country. 

We wandered slowly beside the shore of Grasmere, 
and, as we turned back, the long light no longer 
trembled across the lake, for the sun had just disap- 
peared behind the mountains in splendor, leaving 
the sky a glory of crimson clouds with stretches of 
pearly green between, and beneath were the great 
mountains, bare on their summits and fir-clad below, 
all heavily marked with shadows of purple, and in 
front of us was the shimmering water, reflecting the 
deep dark mountains, reflecting the beauty of the 
sky, reflecting the crimson glory of the clouds. And 
from far off came voices, sounding vague and sweet, 
and the distant plash of oars, and a wild duck with 
neck outstretched flashed by above us, and all was 
loneliness and beauty and peace. And as we went on 
toward the inn, lights began to twinkle through the 
trees from scattered cottages under the mountain- 
side, for though it would be daylight for two hours 
on the heights, darkness had now fallen in the shad- 
owed valley depths. 

In the morning we went on the short distance to 
Rydal Water; a lakelet of loveliness, with mountains 
rising all about and peeping over each other's shoul- 
ders, and the tiny lake has tiny little tree-massed 
islets. A few charming homes and cottages make up 



THE ENGLISH LAKES 317 

the little village of Rydal, beside this water, and 
around these little homes are masses and masses of 
blooming flowers : lilies, delphiniums, rhododendrons, 
sweet Williams, roses and, especially at this season, 
Canterbury bells. The houses are delightful with 
their diamond panes and casement windows, and the 
road is bordered by splendid hedges or by ancient 
stone walls gray with mosses. 

The place is simple in its loveliness; and we go 
up a steep road, past a grove of magnificent beech- 
trees, and come to where stands the house, almost 
hidden among trees and shrubs and flowers on this 
steep hillside, where Wordsworth lived for the long 
period of thirty-seven years. The house is not open 
to strangers, but the real Wordsworth is seen in the 
neighboring beauty of water and trees and flowers 
and mountains. 

Although these are very old roads hereabouts 
through these valleys, the railroads have not even yet 
entered the region, but touch it only on its edges, 
leaving this whole Lake Country in unspoiled beauty. 
Leaving adorable Rydal, we motored to Ambleside, 
a town at the head of Windermere, and here, with- 
out immediately seeing more of Windermere than 
lovely glimpses from its head, we ran through wind- 
ing and wandering roads among lovely hills to Conis- 
ton Water, one of the little-known lakes of the 
district. 

And we were glad, when we came to Coniston Wa- 
ter, that the day had become misty, with gusts of 
rain, for we had been seeing sunny lakes bordered by 
sunny mountains and here there was all the beauty 
of a lake shyly hiding among mists and bordered by 
mist-veiled mountains, and at times the mists would 
go scurrying over the surface of the water and the 
mountain clouds would shift and change. 

Here in Coniston Water, even now a lonely lake 



318 FOUR OX A TOUR 

in a lonely region, lived John Ruskin ; and we looked 
forward with keenest interest to see in what kind of 
home this man chose to live who criticised every- 
thing which claimed to be art. And his house is 
curiously what one would not expect. In the first 
place, one would expect Ruskin to live in the midst 
of an old civilization; perhaps on some Italian lake 
or in the Grand Canal or perhaps even in London, 
but certainly not in this wild and lonely spot, which 
we approach by a series of steep woodland descents 
as we come from Windermere. And the house itself 
is very different from what we expected. We had 
wondered whether we should find a cottage or a pal- 
ace; but it is neither. Standing but a little above 
the lake, massed among extremely thick trees at the 
foot of a hillside, it does not represent the classic 
beauty which Ruskin admired, but is a long, ram- 
bling house of pale-yellow stucco; an extremely at- 
tractive and comfortable place, but one which follows 
neither epoch nor style. It is neither English nor 
Italian; nor, although Ruskin built it, is it Ruskin. 
Looking across its narrow terrace, there is a beauti- 
ful hill and water view, though he could have got 
better views without going so far. A little pebbled 
path leads in front of the house, and is bordered 
by exquisite rose trellises, each one framing a picture 
of the lake — a fascinating idea. 

We entered the dining-room from this path and 
found that it fronts out over the lake, and that at 
one side is a great bank of narrow windows, in almost 
Venetian style, with stone mullions and Gothic tops; 
but they are not just right, and one wonders that he 
of all men should have tolerated them. And all this 
is what he himself designed, for he took a little cot- 
tage and made it into this large house. 

The furniture, and we are assured it was his own 
choosing, is of reddish mahogany and of solid, plain 



THE ENGLISH LAKES 31£ 

round-cornered type ; it is not only far different from 
what one would expect from a lover of the glorious 
old-time designs, but is not good from the standards 
of to-day. Ruskin did not express his personality 
in his home, which is merely good and solid and com- 
fortable, but without beauty or distinction. 

But there is one exception, and it is an exception, 
indeed. For on these pea-green walls, among paint- 
ings of Ruskin himself as a child and of his parents, 
are paintings that he personally chose for his home; 
such as a Doge of Venice, by Titian, and a notable 
Botticelli, and paintings by Turner and Reynolds. 
His library is as he left it, and has a bowed-glass 
window so simple and so fascinating as one looks out 
of it through the roses and at the view that one al- 
most forgives him for his little Victorian fireplace! 
The house, perhaps it should be added, is not shown 
unless one has an introduction. 

As we motored away from the spot we noticed, 
growing wild in a meadow some distance from the 
house, a great quantity of yellow iris, which in Eng- 
land is a wild flower, and we eagerly said that, if 
we could not have the Wordsworth daffodils, we 
would at least have the Ruskin iris ! And we at once 
dug up some roots and carried them with us to take 
home to plant in our garden. 

From here we swing by splendid hilly and devious 
roads back to Windermere and, rounding the south- 
ern end of this largest lake in England, run north- 
ward over a road along the shore, a road of con- 
stant interest and beauty, with somewhat of homes 
and hamlets; and come to the pleasant town of Win- 
dermere and at this point bid farewell to the Lake 
Country, and turn to the southeastward, out of 
Westmorland and in the direction of central 
England. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 

WE went on by splendid roads, through sweep- 
ing views, past pleasant homes, past hay- 
makers in the fields; for we are quickly 
away from the wildness of the Lakes and into simple, 
rural beauty. The drizzle of the morning has left 
us; and ancient homes, old churches, walls topped 
with golden privet, views alternately wide stretching 
and delicately circumscribed, all are of fascination 
in the bright sunlight. 

Then comes an almost dramatic change, for a great 
storm approaches, coming swiftly out of nowhere and 
of intense blackness, and we see haymakers madly 
rushing to save their crops. We are nowhere near 
a town, but watch for a shelter and then the storm 
is upon us — but we are fortunate, for it merely draws 
its wet edge over our car and we see the center of it 
crossing the road through a valley in front, and it 
flings itself against a great hill, which it entirely en- 
velops in absolute blackness. It is all so black and 
swift as to be almost terrible in its grandeur. 

Thus missing the storm, we go on under a sky 
that now is grayly overcast, and through the cool of 
evening our motor is eating up the miles, and we pass 
ancient arching stone bridges over ancient running 
streams — and it occurs to us that these ever-new 
streams are of themselves of the ancient things of 
England. 

In one of the little towns we passed an inn on 
whose front was the naive sign " The Naked Man." 

320 



ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 321 

We had had " The Old Tumbling Sailor," " The 
Merchant of Aleppo," "The Eagle and Child," 
" The Loyal Trooper," " Old First and Last," " The 
Mare and Colt " and " The Ship Aground," but this 
outdid them all. It was clear that the name came 
from a very old stone figure built into the wall of 
the building; a figure which was, to say the least, 
indicative of the name. 

It was a long and splendid flight, and we thought 
again, as we have so often thought on our journey, 
of how different from each other the different parts 
of Great Britain are, and how these different char- 
acteristics make for such ever-changing variety. It 
was well on in the evening when we reached the town 
of Skipton, through an extremely narrow approach 
into the town, and then on through the town by a 
great widening that is half street and half market- 
place, and drew up at a hotel where we found we 
could not stay, because it was to be sold under fore- 
closure next morning. So we went to another, pass- 
ing a thronged corner where a nervous and officious 
policeman was issuing contradictory commands. But 
he was easily managed by the simple question, " Now, 
just where do you want us to go? ' : And we went. 

There is an ancient church here in Skipton which 
still rings the curfew at eight o'clock, but that no- 
body pays any attention to it does at least take away 
from its importance. The church is an effective 
square-towered old building, with stately monuments 
to the Cliffords, for this is the center of the Clifford 
country, and near the church is the superb towered 
gateway which leads from the street of the almost 
sordid town into the grounds of the mighty castle, 
the old-time seat of the powerful Cliffords, one of 
the great family names of English history. 

Even now, after the numberless things we have 
seen on our long journey, we still find that we can 



322 FOUR ON A TOUR 

be enthusiastic in regard to an old castle, and espe- 
cially such an old castle as this. We go through 
the gateway in the bright morning sunlight, and find 
that a great part of the great structure is practically 
modern and that it is lived in, but also that a very 
great extent is very old and unused and entirely un- 
changed. We enter an inner courtyard, a lovely 
place which was a century old at the time when that 
famous Clifford known as the Shepherd Earl, the son 
of Shakespeare's " black-faced Clifford," led his great 
following to Flodden ; and so we take it that the great 
yew-tree in the center of this court is probably five 
hundred years old ; and it so spreads out its umbrella- 
like branches as to roof over the entire courtyard and 
give to it all a deep-green, ghostly gloom; and yet, 
though it is gloom, it is a pleasant gloom, dimly sug- 
gestive of centuries of happiness. Fair Rosamond 
was born in this castle, though not perhaps in any 
part now preserved, and perhaps some sense of her 
beauty lingers vaguely about the old pile; and an- 
other beautiful woman was here, Mary Stuart, when 
a prisoner. 

Ancient stone coats-of-arms, almost obliterated by 
Time, range around the yew-tree's base. The tree 
itself is mossed to the very top of its trunk, and moss 
touches lightly the red stone of the courtyard walls, 
the lovely, narrow mullioned windows and the pro- 
jecting oriels. It is an intimate little courtyard, sug- 
gestive of romance and sweet mystery and not in the 
least of the grimness and sternness of the past; and 
from here we go wandering through a labyrinth of 
ancient, empty rooms, and once we walk up ancient 
steps that were built in the time of William the Con- 
queror; for we are walking through the centuries, 
here in this great ancient portion of the castle, and 
come to nothing less ancient than hundreds of years 
ago. 



ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 323 

Doors open fascinatingly into ancient little rooms 
or great halls and apartments, and there is an ancient 
kitchen with its great fireplaces for many generations 
cold; there are ancient empty bedrooms whose cap- 
tivating windows are what we have been admiring 
from the courtyard; many of the labyrinthine pas- 
sages are dark and gloomy and a winding dark stair 
leads us down to what no house of the good old times 
was really complete without, an absolutely dark 
dungeon ; and we mount to the very roof, all of stone 
and seamed with lead, and from here there are fine 
views over the hills and moors, and we see, what is 
now hidden from the town approach, the stream that 
made the ancient moat winding around the castle 
base. And it may be added that the so-called new 
part of the castle was built two hundred years ago. 

We had often heard that on some of the old castles 
and mansions of Yorkshire, and we are now in York- 
shire, there was open stone lettering of family mot- 
toes along the tops of parapets, and here we saw, 
most effectively lettered against the sky, over the 
ancient gateway, in open letters, Desormais, that 
stand-forever motto of the Cliffords, Henceforth. 

And yet the memory of the mighty Cliffords has 
gone ; the family glory glimmers through the dreams 
of things that were. And this is remindful of an 
amazing discovery that we have made in England. 
We had taken it for granted that not only are castles 
old, but that the peerage is old ; that not only are the 
rights and the wealth of the peers immense, but that 
all this has been inherited prescriptively through cen- 
turies from the time of the Norman Conquest. So 
it amazed us to find, gradually, that of the many 
dukedoms the very oldest was created in 1398, that 
thirteen were created in the eighteenth century and 
six even as late as in the nineteenth; that no mar- 
quis' title is older than 1551, that twenty marquisates 



324 FOUR ON A TOUR 

are of the nineteenth century and that three are even 
of the present twentieth ; and so it goes on even more 
surprisingly with the lower peerage ranks. The 
ancient families have dwindled in importance or dis- 
appeared, and the devotion and subservience of the 
people have been transferred to these upstarts, men 
of wealth, brewers and distillers, soapmakers and dry- 
cleaners, or their descendants, with quite a number, 
among the most prominent and wealthy of all, de- 
scendants of women who gave questionable service to 
royalty, and with a sprinkling of men famous in the 
law and of others who have won their country's 
battles. 

Such thoughts naturally come at this ancient 
stronghold of the Cliffords; and from this castle we 
go on our way to another interesting memento of 
ancient times but of different character, for five miles 
from Skipton Castle are the ruins of Bolton Abbey. 

Bolton Abbey is a beautiful ruin set in alluring 
environment ; and how the old-time monks did choose 
beauty spots! — as at Tintern, at Fountains and here. 
We enter the broad abbey grounds literally through 
a hole that was long ago broken through the wall and 
which is still used as the main entrance. It is curi- 
ous, too, that this is one of the few places in Eng- 
land where there is no admission charge; and yet 
it is owned by one of the dukes. 

The abbey is on a low-set peninsula and a river 
bends sweetly and restfully by, and there is a wide 
stretch of meadow and of easy, grassy slopes, and far 
away rise low cliffs; it is peculiarly a place of peace- 
fulness, even the great woolly cattle with their curv- 
ing horns that come up to us, come peacefully; and 
a positively captivating bit is an ancient series of 
stepping-stones, fifty-eight in number, set firmly in 
the riverbed. We crossed from side to side of the 
stream on these stones just as the monks themselves 





A MOUNTAIN ROAD NEAR DERWENT WATER 




Looking across Thirlmere at Helvellyn 




At delightful Rydal Water 




The home of John Ruskin on Coniston Water 



ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 325 

used to cross — and rescued, or at least helped to 
safety, three English women who got part way and 
were only able to scream, each on her individual 
stone. 

As we went off through the hole in the wall, there 
was an invasion of boy scouts, who have become a 
marked and frequent feature of the English land- 
scape. From here we aim still farther into York- 
shire, swinging for a short time through a comfort- 
able and prosperous country, but soon mounting high 
among bare hills and going on through bareness to- 
ward Keighley; a place which is pronounced Keeth- 
ley! Approaching Keighley we had crossed the 
river Aire, and when we saw the familiar-looking 
dogs, rangy, alert, rough-coated, we recognized them 
as Airedales, and it was pleasant to think that we had 
been running through the region where this dog has 
long been raised. 

Keighley is a modern, prosperous-looking, manu- 
facturing place, and at a corner in the center of the 
town in front of a public building we saw some half- 
dozen policemen looking intently and watchfully at 
nothing, and standing in immovable silence, and fac- 
ing them were several hundred men ranked with 
almost military precision away from the center of 
the road, and these men also stood in immovable 
silence, and each of these hundreds of men had his 
eyes fixed upon the entrance of the building. It was 
an uncanny scene, in the threatening tenseness of it. 
It appeared that a strike was on in the town and that 
one of the leaders had been violently arrested, and 
that all of these men, his friends, were standing here 
in mute protest waiting for him to appear on his way 
to court. 

From Keighley we turn off into a great moor coun- 
try, a stern region of bare and sweeping land, high 
and bleak, and we go through a series of unhappy- 



326 



FOUR ON A TOUR 



looking villages and come to a largish town, from 
which we can look far up to a cluster of houses on 
a moorland hilltop; and a low tower that is in that 
cluster we know to be Haworth church, of which the 
father of the Bronte sisters was rector. But how to 
get there seems a trifle difficult; by going down still 
deeper and then climbing up a great steepness of 
road seems to be the only way; and again wonder 
comes that anybody could have deemed England to 
be a level country! — and there comes the further and 
never-to-be-answered question of why people have 
built villages on such inaccessible and utterly unde- 
sirable heights. But before we essay the steepness 
with our car, a policeman's wife, whom we find in 
sole charge of the police station — how delightfully 
they do some things over here ! — lets us have water for 
the boiling radiator and at the same time points out 
a private toll-road, and we find it a queer and primi- 
tive little road, but it does let us into an easier ap- 
proach to the hilltop and to the bare little village 
of Haworth. 

Looking off from this drear hilltop, the outlook is 
over miles and miles of saddening bleakness, with the 
immediate air blackened with smoke from the fac- 
tories in the valley. About us, in the little village 
we have reached, on the top of this height, are tight- 
built, unhappy-looking little houses suggestive of 
poor living and of a narrow outlook not to be re- 
lieved by literal breadth of view; and in the center 
of the huddle is the little church and beside it is a 
large gloomy graveyard huddled thick with standing 
and lying stones. The graveyard is dismally shaded, 
and over a low wall which hems it in is the largish 
front of an old stone house, and this was the home 
of the Brontes. No wonder those three sisters wrote 
grimly! Nor is there much relief on the other side 
of the house, for the windows open out upon a great 



ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 327 

stretch of desolation, and, gloomy though it is, the 
house does not look quite so grim as when the 
Brontes lived here, for the windows of its front have 
been widened. 

We left the little perched hamlet and went down 
the steep road which we had avoided in going up, for 
it would make a very material shortening of our 
onward distance ; and there was no trouble whatever, 
for with a little care we managed to go easily down. 

Soon we had to swing up again, up long, long 
stretches of climbing roads, and we went for miles 
across a summit-land of moors. And here the un- 
happy aspect so noticeable where the moors are dotted 
with unhappy villages disappeared, and, in this 
immensity of bleakness and loneliness, with horizons 
illimitable, with houses rarely to be seen, there is a 
general aspect of stern grandeur and not infrequently 
much of a certain grim beauty. The seldom-seen 
houses are of heavy stone, with windows heavily mul- 
lioned, and are of a gravity and sternness befitting 
the sternly grave moors. 

All this is in the West Riding of Yorkshire; and 
for centuries the men hereabouts have been known 
as dalesmen, because they grouped their homes and 
farms for shelter in the deep and often abrupt val- 
leys which, just out of sight in the general views, 
intersect the moors. At length we come to the ne- 
cessity of descending from the moors and we drop 
down into the busy little center of Hebden Bridge, a 
place with the reputation of making the best woolen 
cloth in England, and from here we climb again ; and 
it is the hardest climb on our entire journey. 

We were to mount to tiny Heptonstall, perched 
far above us, and we were told that the road was very 
steep but good, and that it had been used in road- 
climbing contests, which did not sound altogether 
promising for people who were traveling for pleasure 



328 FOUR ON A TOUR 

alone and not for endurance; but it was suggested 
that at a point quite a distance up we should turn to 
the right at a chapel and complete the climb by a 
way comparatively easy. We started and went up 
interminably, the road getting steeper and steeper, 
and we looked vainly for the chapel and the turn. 
We did at length come to where there was a turn, 
but there was no sight of a chapel, and the turn was 
a dip down the hill, making an apparently absurd 
place to stop our climbing, for the road was particu- 
larly steep there and in addition was narrowed by 
some piles of repair material, and if we had stopped 
we should very likely not have been able to gain mo- 
mentum again. But it was the turn that we should 
have taken, after all, though we had not been told 
that the turn began with a downward dip, and the 
chapel was a building we had noticed that looked 
absolutely unlike a chapel and only like a kind of 
shop or mill. And so we kept on climbing, and to- 
ward the summit the road became all cobbles; almost 
a cobbled stair; so that our progress was materially 
checked by the roughness as well as by the steepness ; 
but we kept on — it was not a place to stop even to 
lighten the load — and we finally mounted what the 
inhabitants expressively call the Buttress, and were 
at Heptonstall. 

It is a hill town curiously suggestive of the hill 
towns of Italy; and we found that long ago the 
Romans had a station here and that later the Nor- 
mans came; and now it is a compactly-built little 
place of old stone houses, stone-roofed, and in its cen- 
ter is a close-packed churchyard full of the mingled 
graves of mingled centuries; and there are two 
churches within the churchyard, one new, but the 
other a roofless but still towered ruin which dates 
from over six hundred years ago. 

Great solitary roads stretch off from here, and 






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The home of the Brontes, beside the Haworth 
churchyard 




The moorland vale of Alcomdene 



ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS §29 

deep valleys drop abruptly down, and we follow on 
some of the roads through a wild and glorious region 
and through now and then a bleak stone village and 
past solitary mullion-windowed farmhouses, and we 
come, in the midst of the stern glory of it all, to the 
sunny, captivating valley of Alcomdene, with a 
stream rippling brightly through it, and a few scat- 
tered ancient houses sheltered here from the great 
winds of the moor and each one shaded by a few 
dark trees. 

We felt the fascination of it all; and, although we 
were now at a place but three or four miles across 
the moors from Haworth, we had been compelled to 
detour some twenty-five miles in motoring to get 
there, on account of the deep hidden dales. All 
about Alcomdene, on the great moors that stretch 
off from this valley, are grandeur and beauty and 
loneliness without unhappiness, and we found the 
people in all this entire region a silent, sturdy and 
vigorous folk, with a certain aspect as of moun- 
taineers. 

We stayed for the night at an old house, half home 
and half an inn for grouse hunters — this being a won- 
derful grouse-shooting region — and under the morn- 
ing sun we looked out over the bleak country and 
the splendid dignity of moor and valley, and then 
went on our way. 

Before long we are out of this region and reach 
a region that leads us on for miles and miles through 
a succession of manufacturing towns; the towns all 
bare and unlovely and the intermittent landscape also 
bare and unlovely; there is a striking absence of the 
happiness and brightness of aspect that we should like 
to associate with prosperous manufacturing places. 
We go through Halifax; and how strange a city it 
seems for the writing of " Robinson Crusoe," of all 
books ! And one realizes that this general moor coun- 



330 FOUR ON A TOUR 

try inspires books which are at least out of the com- 
mon line, such as " Wuthering Heights," " Jane 
Eyre," " The Secret Garden " and " Robinson Cru- 
soe." For we are still in a general moor region, but 
a moor region that has been turned into a manufac- 
turing region. 

We go rapidly on over slopes and through val- 
leys and finally approach the old manufacturing city 
of Sheffield, still famous for its cutlery, and we go 
into the city by a long, long road of houses of an 
unattractiveness which seems bordering on misery, 
and in the center of the city we see evident indica- 
tions that it is a wealth-producing place, but are also 
reminded of a statement that we have somewhere 
heard ( but which is not true of a city like Manchester, 
though it may be true of this) that one never sees a 
man walking with a smile on his face in an English 
city. And we at least did not see smiles in Sheffield. 
We gain an impression, too, as of a city that is lack- 
ing in civic pride. And it is certainly a point of 
interest in regard to Sheffield that a great portion 
of the citv is the personal property of the Duke of 
Norfolk. " 

Worksop was our next objective point, less than 
twenty miles farther to the eastward, and we ap- 
proached it through a countiyside whose beauty has 
largely disappeared, defaced as it is by collieries and 
their debris, and by brick works and factories. There 
is such a vast quantity of wonderfully picturesque 
countryside in England that it is well to realize that 
there is some small proportion of countryside that 
is spoiled. 

We arrived at Worksop late and spent the night 
there, at a thoroughly good inn, and it was curious 
to realize that we had come at this point to within 
eight miles of where we were on our northern jour- 
ney, when on the way to Scrooby. Worksop is en- 



ON THE YORKSHIRE MOORS 331 

tirely a duke-owned town, famous for its ale, it 
being a possession of the Duke of Newcastle ; a bare, 
brick, lord-owned town with only one lordly thing 
within it, an ancient priory gate, and even this is 
bare and bald in its setting. 

But there was one other pleasant thing in Work- 
sop after all, for there was a market with little fishes 
curled up to bite their own tails and big ones ar- 
ranged in geometric patterns, in the open air — of 
course, without ice or screens, for they would not be 
English! — and there was poultry, each chicken hav- 
ing a little snuft of feathers left on its tail to show 
its color and breed and with its feet curiously crossed 
like those of a Crusader on a monument. Inci- 
dentally, too, we noticed that meat and meat bones 
for the poorest folk could be bought for three or four 
cents a pound, although the best cuts were well over 
thirty cents a pound. 

In a little shop in Worksop an Englishwoman, 
standing beside one of us, was looking at umbrellas, 
and asked, dubiously, " But will this wear? " Where- 
upon the dealer replied, with a smile that only half 
hid the insolence of the cleverness — and one does so 
often notice a quarrelsome attitude in the British 
salesman! — " Can you expect eternity for five 
shillings?" 



CHAPTER XXXII 

SHERWOOD FOREST AND HADDON HALL 

WE had come to the lord-owned place with the 
unlordly name of Worksop as the point 
from which to enter the lordly Dukeries; a 
name which has come to be applied to a remarkable 
group of ducal estates near here ; and first we motor 
through miles of Clumber Park and, as motors are 
forbidden by the direct road, we reach it by a longer 
permissible way and enter through park gates into 
an avenue, three miles long, of lime-trees in a double 
row on each side ; and the shadows of the trees lie like 
castellations on the long white road. Thinnish woods, 
largely of white birch but also of the larch, the 
spruce, the pine, the fir, stretch off into the 
distances, and many pheasants with their little ones 
are cowering in the grass, and gorgeous male pheas- 
ants are stalking under the very tall bracken which is 
like a green veil spread high over the ground. 

And all this woodland arouses delightful memories, 
for all this is Sherwood Forest, so rich in romantic 
memories of Robin Hood. There are some enormous 
oaks along these forest roads which may well go back 
to the romantic days of the famous outlaw, and the 
forest is dotted with open glades: a veritable 
" forest ancient as the hills, inclosing sunny spots of 
greenery." 

Clumber House, which has given a name to a little 
kind of spaniel once raised here which, unlike other 
spaniels, hunts silently, is itself an immense and im- 
posing edifice, a little lonely and closed-up in appear- 

333 



HADDON HALL, 333 

ance, sitting low on the ground, fronted by pleasant 
pleasure grounds and terraces and looking out over 
a great sheet of water with which it is almost on a 
level. It is the seat of the Duke of Newcastle. 

A short and agreeable run takes us to Welbeck 
Abbey, which is not in any sense an abbey, but is the 
enormous mansion of the Duke of Portland. We 
had had romantic Sherwood Forest and Clumber all 
to ourselves without meeting or seeing a single other 
visitor, but at Welbeck there is the greatest imagi- 
nable contrast, for there are throngs, veritable hordes, 
of English visitors ; almost all men — " trippers " 
from Leeds, Sheffield and such nearby cities, it being 
a Saturday afternoon — with the wives left at home; 
and we see not an American there but ourselves. 

Welbeck has a vast extent of underground rooms 
and passages, and the crowds go through in care of 
guides, with a hundred or more in each party. They 
go through with a careless swaggering, with a sort 
of admiring contempt in which the contempt is 
stronger than the admiration — and a certain furtive 
jealousy is evidently, with many, stronger than either. 
All visitors who wish to enter at all, and who get 
started on the way, are compelled to do a tremen- 
dous amount of walking before the guide finishes his 
course; and in passing between buildings we notice 
that a number of the men pluck garden flowers and 
baldly make a show of them, and in the great under- 
ground rooms we notice that some of them, from 
bravado and contempt, sit down and sprawl in valu- 
able chairs not supposed to be even touched. It was 
impossible to see these men carelessly mobbing 
through, without thinking what might some day hap- 
pen if the lure of loot and liberty were offered them. 

And it was interesting to hear a quiet English- 
man, looking with disapproval on all this, say: "I 
would rather have laws made by a crazy duke than by 



334 FOUR ON A TOUR 

a workingman's member of parliament." But all 
dukes are not crazy, although the one who built this 
vast underground expensiveness may well have been, 
nor fortunately are all British workingmen like these, 
who evidently come from such unhappy and unfor- 
tunate surroundings as we have been seeing on our 
way here. 

We expected something at least mysterious in the 
Welbeck subterraneanism, but it represents nothing 
whatever but extravagant folly and freakishness ; and 
much of it is nothing more than concrete passage- 
ways such as might connect one warehouse with an- 
other; there are literally miles of underground and 
semi-underground construction of one kind or an- 
other, although visitors are not piloted through all 
of it. There is a huge ballroom beautifully floored, 
whose glassed ceiling is on a level with the flower- 
beds outside, and this room has considerable ex- 
pensive furniture, and its walls are lined by a large 
number of notable paintings by Raphael, Van Dyke, 
Tintoretto, Rubens and others — the list is long — and, 
instead of this underground housing, such paintings 
certainly deserve to be placed in the tremendous man- 
sion, with its myriad rooms, above ground. They are 
too precious for a cellar. 

Everything at Welbeck is vast, and it might al- 
most be said that nothing is in good taste or beau- 
tiful, except that there must needs be considerable 
beauty in the flowers and trees of the vast extent of 
park and gardens. 

We leave Welbeck gladly, yet glad to have seen a 
place of which the world hears so much ; and strike off 
through a pleasant country, with ever the road wind- 
ing on through narrow green lanes, and passing from 
time to time through a little village and finally, just 
a few miles northwest of Mansfield, we enter a long 
park drive and motor on, past beautiful open glades, 



HADDON HALL 335 

bordered by great trees, past deer that dot the green- 
ery and to the front of Hardwick Hall. 

Hardwick Hall, built in the time of Queen Eliza- 
beth by that famous Countess of Shrewsbury who 
is known to this day as Bess of Hardwick, is not only 
a building of superb size and beauty, but stands com- 
plete, unspoiled and untouched, as a building of the 
Elizabethan era. 

In the lofty open stonework, topping each corner 
at the front, are the stone letters " E. S.," for Eliza- 
beth of Shrewsbury — which nobody ever calls her! 
The people of the house refer to her respectfully as 
Elizabeth of Hardwick, and the world in general uses 
Hardwick with the Bess. 

In spite of putting on speed, we arrived here after 
the closing hour for visitors, which on Saturdays 
is one o'clock, but it merely needed a few words of 
explanation, and we were cheerfully shown through 
the entire mansion; one of the most satisfactory and 
interesting places in all Great Britain. 

There are rooms palatial in extent and in furnish- 
ings, and there is a wonderful collection of old-time 
paintings that are portraits of contemporaries of Bess 
of Hardwick and Queen Elizabeth ; — truly a time of 
imperious women, that, for Bess of Hardwick is re- 
puted to have been one of the most imperious that 
ever lived, and Queen Elizabeth was certainly more 
imperious still. 

There are great, lofty, sunny rooms and galleries; 
there are rooms of intimate delightf ulness ; there are 
one or two rooms particularly associated with Mary 
Stuart, who spent some of her years of imprisonment 
in Bess of Hardwick's charge, and there are personal 
mementos preserved here of that unfortunate Queen, 
such as the bed in which she slept and the embroi- 
deries which she wrought. 

This building was never in any sense a castle; it 



336 FOUR ON A TOUR 

was always a palace; nor is it yet in any degree a 
ruin. It is a beautiful place, beautifully preserved; 
one remembers the old-time story that its builder, 
when young, was told by a fortune-teller that she 
would never die so long as she continued to build; 
whereupon the passion of her life became that of 
building, and she constructed other notable buildings 
besides this, and was never weary of adding details 
to keep away Death; but in the bitter winter of 1607 
it became so cold that her workmen had to stop — 
and then passed away the famous Bess of Hardwick. 

Hardwick Hall is one of the places particularly 
worth the seeing, so full is it of beauty and of inter- 
est; and as we motor away we take a long last look 
at it, standing there with such dignity on a great 
natural terrace above the stream, and the sun glints 
from its many windows, reminding us of the rhyme, 
contemporary with its building, of " Hardwick Hall, 
more glass than wall," so many thousands of glass 
window-panes did Bess of Hardwick put in. 

There was still another great mansion that we 
wished to see; Chatsworth, the seat of the Duke of 
Devonshire; and we reached it by running north- 
ward and through the aristocratically named little 
city of Chesterfield, which is dominated by the most 
grotesque thing in England, a tall, old, twisted 
church-spire ; not crooked, not bent, but literally and 
incredibly twisted. Literalists try to explain that 
this came gradually through a curious warping of its 
lead and timber construction, but those who know 
insist that the devil seized the spire in his hands and 
twisted it, a hundred years or so ago; and of course 
it is perfectly obvious, as a policeman squinting up 
at it with us said, that it has the very devil of a twist. 

From Chesterfield, a run of a few miles to the 
westward took us through pleasant little Baslow to 
Chatsworth Park. The immense buff-colored man- 



:;■/„'•.*- .-,r^.':- •^■- 
-'V: *.«/*.- '••■."■ JL. 

"V- ■■ .--W^M; 




. 


g i ***' i ifa ; ft j|g»3it^vMi|f |y * • - /^ 







Under the oaks of Sherwood Forest 




A part of the Duke of Portland's palace, where a garden masks 

SUBTERRANEAN ROOMS 




The home of the famous Bess of Hardwick 




A PLACE WHICH REMAINS A WISTFUL MEMORY: H ADDON HaLL 



HADDON HALL 337 

sion — we are told that it is five hundred and sixty 
feet long, and it is broad and high in proportion — 
is not open to visitors, nor are the roads that run near 
to it, but anyone is permitted to drive through the 
park and to view it in its distant immensity of bulk 
across the valley on the opposite side of the river. 
There are many deer in Chatsworth Park, and they 
are very tame, indeed, and we saw a number of sheep, 
plainly lettered on their sides " D. D." — which cleri- 
cal designation means Duke of Devonshire. 

Chatsworth is but a trifle over two hundred years 
old; but a few miles away, near tiny little Rowsley, 
is a building very much older and vastly more beau- 
tiful — Haddon Hall. 

All about Haddon Hall is a country of exquisite 
loveliness, a country of streams and meadows and 
flowers and scattered trees and gently-rising hills; 
and the name of one of these hills, tree-topped as it 
was, appealed to us from its aptness, for it is the 
Hunter's Cap. 

On the whole, we were glad to see Haddon Hall 
so near the end of our journey, for it remains in 
our memory as the very poetry of building, as the 
most lovable of all the homes of England. It was 
built long ago ; much of it is over five hundred years 
old, much of it four hundred, some of it not much 
over three hundred, but it is all harmoniously 
perfect. 

It is not now either lived in or furnished, but the 
rooms and the roof, the walls and the windows, are 
intact. It is everywhere a place of fascination, of 
delightf ulness ; nowhere in England does the man- 
tling ivy cover walls and corners and projections 
more delectably. It is a house poetically located, on 
a wooded hillside a little above a soft-flowing and 
alder-bordered stream. 

Room after room is a place of beauty; and from 



338 FOUR OX A TOUR 

the old ballroom, with its ancient paneling and carv- 
ing, we look out through little diamond-panes at a 
garden glimpse of captivating loveliness; and just 
out there — and how a good old love story helps a 
place! — is the very terrace over which Dorothy Ver- 
non slipped away, centuries ago, to meet her lover; 
and it might have been yesterday, for the very yews 
that we look at shadowed her as she fled. 

The low castellated walls of Haddon Hall, its fine 
inner courtyard, its paneled rooms, its terraces, its 
lovely gardens, its position above the buttercupped 
meadows and the bending stream, unite to make it a 
wistful memory. 

We had a rather early dinner, ordered as we went 
by to Haddon Hall, at the ancient Peacock Inn at 
nearby Rowsley, an inn of the days of Queen Eliza- 
beth, and it was delightful that we could dine so 
anciently and admirably immediately after leaving 
Haddon Hall, and then we started off for a long ride 
toward Liverpool, not expecting to find much of in- 
terest on the way, except in passing through Cran- 
ford again. 

We ran rapidly, by a highly picturesque hill and 
valley road, through Bakewell and up through a long, 
narrow ravine to Buxton, a place said to be the 
highest-located town in England; a large and popu- 
lar resort with hot springs. It was getting dusk 
when we reached there, but we decided to go farther 
before stopping for the night, and so we passed on, 
but we did take a look, in passing, at a hospital dome 
with the reputation of being the dome of greatest 
diameter in all Europe — a startling claim to make, 
and it does not look the part, but the claim is made 
in all seriousness and the figure of one hundred and 
fifty-four feet is offered, which is certainly a little 
larger diameter than that of the dome of St. Peter's 
or even of the Pantheon. 



HADDON HALL 339 

Leaving Buxton and this astonishing hump, we 
went on. The map showed we were approaching a 
hill, but we had no thought that there would be 
mountain climbing to do on the way to Liverpool. 
But soon we struck into a lonely district, up from 
which led a road which mounted steadily in lengthy 
sweeps, and so easily that the gear did not need to 
be shifted. We are afraid to say how long that up- 
ward climb was, for we might exaggerate, but we 
went on and on until, as we found later, we were 
at the altitude of one thousand six hundred and eighty 
feet, and far up there we went on through an immense 
and sweeping stretch of miles of bareness and loneli- 
ness, with the ghostly dusk creeping at us over the 
moor. And in that desolateness it was chill and cold. 
We were in another world from that of the beautiful 
halls we had so recently left. We passed a bare 
tavern up there in the lofty solitude, the Cat and 
Fiddle; and either this lofty road, one of the few 
highest in Great Britain, is named after the tavern 
or the tavern is named for the road. There was a 
vast impressiveness about that cold and high and 
darkening road; and after a while we began to go 
down, by long and gradual descents, and it was dark 
when, finishing a day's run of eighty-two miles, we 
ran into Macclesfield, and went up the brilliantly 
lighted hill, and past the busy street-market and 
along the streets that were thick with people; and 
a band was playing and it was a general Saturday- 
night jollification. 

And here, on our last night before reaching Liver- 
pool, it was natural to talk over our experiences and 
estimate how we stood. The car and its engine were 
apparently in perfect condition; we had not even 
scraped paint; the original tires, of American make, 
though sold to us in England, with which we had be- 
gun three thousand miles before, were in excellent 



340 FOUR ON A TOUR 

condition, and just one was beginning to show some 
signs of wear; the inner tubes were practically per- 
fect and the two extras that we carried had never 
been unpacked; and we had had no accidents. 

For ourselves, we were all in fine physical trim 
and feeling vastly benefited by the long outdoor life 
of the journey and the splendid air; we had carried 
goggles, but not one of us had ever felt any need 
to use a pair; we had learned that in the damp cli- 
mate of England and in its air, so free from dust, 
there need be no disagreeable consequences from 
lengthy exposure, if simple precautions are taken, 
and so we were neither tanned nor sunburned, though 
we had rarely had the top of the car up for even half 
an hour at a time. 

Our expense for gasoline had been nine pounds, 
fifteen shilling and threepence, for a total distance 
(adding to-morrow's final run to Liverpool) of two 
thousand nine hundred and twenty-seven miles: a 
cost of barely one cent and a half a mile, even at 
the tremendous price of gasoline (petrol) in Great 
Britain. It would have been a little less had we 
from the first used No. 1 petrol, slightly more ex- 
pensive but more powerful, instead of No. 2 : but we 
had mistakenly tried No. 2 for a while on the advice 
of the car manufacturers themselves ; one of the many 
examples that we noticed of a British frugality which 
is the opposite of economy. Lubricating oil for the 
tour cost twenty shillings, and there had been also 
a couple of cans of cup grease to buy. 

We went to bed with the feeling that much was 
to go out of our lives on the morrow: and with the 
thoughts of seriousness and of things of beauty, of 
long, long rides through the marvelous English coun- 
tryside, of towers and cathedrals, of delightful out- 
door luncheons at places of delightful charm, of the 
wonder and exhilaration of it all, there came also 



HADDON HALL 841 

thoughts less serious, of the weight of copper money 
that would no more need to be borne about, of the 
little brass pots of hot bath water that would no more 
be carried into our rooms, of the red threads that 
we should cease to find on our handkerchiefs, of the 
laundry that would no longer be (to use their own 
word, and it is a descriptive one) that would no 
longer be " mangled " ; and we realized that we should 
soon be away from a country where the people can- 
not count their own money — a feat quite impossible, 
we had literally found, with the greater part of the 
English. And with all this medley of thoughts, of 
things serious and the reverse, we went to sleep for 
our last night, in a very comfortable inn, before end- 
ing the tour. 

Next morning we started again on our way, and 
crossed our early route at that most satisfactory 
place, drowsy Cranford, and we lunched there at the 
same little inn where we had dined and slept at the 
very beginning of the journey — and how strange it 
all seemed! And from here it was a run of thirty 
miles to Liverpool, and the end, for there the car was 
turned over to the purchaser and we assembled our 
belongings and prepared for the steamer and for 
home. 

And it was strange to feel that it was all over:, 
that no more were we to arise in the morning with 
glad anticipation of the discoveries into which the 
wheels were to whirl us. It was all over ; and others 
even had our very car and were off with it, enjoy- 
ing experiences such as we had for so many days 
enjoyed. 

And that is precisely the important part of it : that 
what we did was nothing difficult, nothing hard for 
others to accomplish and enjoy; and the reason for 
writing this narrative is not merely to point out where 
we went, or to describe what we did as being any- 



342 FOUR ON A TOUR 

thing of personal achievement, but to show how easily 
any motorist may do likewise. 

For our course need not be precisely followed. 
Where we took one road, another motorist may take 
another road; where we went to one ruin or abbey 
or town or place of note, another motorist may pre- 
fer to see some other ruin or abbey or town or place 
of note. Certain places must needs be seen by all, 
but England is so rich in the worth-while that as to 
other places there may be variety of taste and fancy, 
as well as variations dependent on a longer or a 
shorter length of tour. 

We had had marvelous experiences. We had got 
at the very heart of the country. We had had six 
weeks of glorious gliding through scenes of beauty 
and interest. All had been fascination. We had 
tried to see Great Britain adequately, happily, inex- 
pensively; and we had succeeded. In planning the 
tour we had anticipated much, but the result was so 
infinitely beyond anticipation! And it was all so 
reasonable, so feasible, so practicable! 



INDEX 



Abbey : Battle, 163, 164 : Bolton, 
324 ; Crowland, 225 ; Dryburgh, 
258; Fountains, 240-242; Glas- 
tonbury, 106; Kelso, 254; Mel- 
rose, 256, 257, 283 ; Tewkesbury, 
75-78; Tintern, 89-91 

Abbotsford, 257 

Aberfeldy, 288 

Aberglasllyn, Pass of, 46 

Afton Water, 300 

Aira Force, 313 

Airedales, 325 

Alcomdene, 329 

Alloway, 298 

Alnwick, 250, 251 

Ambleside, 317 

Ancient and Honorable Artillery, 187 

Andover, 149 

Ardlui, 293 

Arthur, King, 124, 126 

Arundel, 157 

Ascot state, 190 

Atholl, Duke of, 283 

Automobile Club, 4, 15 

Automobile ; see Motor Car 

Axminster, 134 

Ayr, 298 

Ayrshires, 297, 304 



Blairgowrie, 279 

Blandford, 141-143 

Blenheim, 202, 203 

Bolton Abbey, 324 

Boscastle, 124 

Boston, 226-228 

Bothwell, Earl of, 261 

Braid Hills, 269 

Branxton Moor, 252 

Brewster, William, 232 

Bridges: Cally, 279; Forth, 269; 

Tay, 277 ; Triangular, 225 ; 

Twizel, 252 
Bridgnorth, 64-66 
Bridport, 137 
Brighton, 158 
Bristol, 99-101 
Bristol Channel, 110, 113 
Broadway, 204-207 
Bromley, 180, 181 
Bronte home, 326 
Brougham Castle, 312 
Browning, Mrs., birthplace of, 243 
Buccleuch, Duke of, 283, 301 
Burnham Beeches, 193 
Burns, 298, 300, 304, 306 
Bushy Park, 184 
Buxton, 338 



B 

Baggage, how carried, 10 

Bangor, 38 

Bannockburn, 271 

Barmouth, 51 

Barnstaple, 119 

Barton-on-the-Heath, 206 

Barum, 119 

Bass Rock, 262 

Bath, 101-103 

Battle village, 163 

Battlefields : Bannockburn, 271 ; 
Flodden, 252-254 ; Hastings, 163 ; 
Killiecrankie, 286 ; Sedgemoor, 
108 ; the Standard, 242 ; Tewkes- 
bury, 76 

Beaconsfield village, 194 

Becket, Thomas a, 173 

Beddgelert, 45 

Beech-tree hedge, 279 

Ben Lomond, 294 

Ben More, 291 

Berwick, 252 

Berwick Law, 264 

Bess of Hardwick, 335, 336 

Bideford, 119 

Birnam Wood, 283 

Black-and-white architecture, 59, 69 

Black Prince, 172 



Cader Idris, 53 

Cally, Bridge of, 279 

Canterbury, 170-175 

Carlisle, 307 

Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 261, 303 

Carlyle, Thomas, 261, 303, 305 

Carnarvon, 39-43 

Carnegie, Andrew, 273 

Carse o' Gowrie, 278 

Casterbridge, 139 

Cat and Fiddle, 339 

Cathedrals : Bangor, 38 ; Bristol, 99 ; 
Canterbury, 170-174 ; Carlisle, 
307 ; Chester, 17, 19 ; Chichester, 
156; Durham, 242-245; Exeter, 
130 ; Glasgow, 296 ; Gloucester, 
79-81 ; Lincoln, 229, 230 ; Man- 
chester, 9 ; Peterborough, 224 ; 
Ripon, 238 ; Rochester, 175 ; 
Salisbury, 146; St. Andrew's, 
276; St. Asaph's, 32-34; Wells, 
104 ; Winchester, 149 ; Worces- 
ter, 71-73; York, 234-236; total 
in England, 17, 18 

Cemmaes, 55-56 

Chalfont St. Giles, 196-197 

Charles the First, 65, 273 

Charles the Second, 72 

Charlie, Prince, 266, 270 



343 



344 



INDEX 



Chatsworth, 336, 337 

Chatterton, 100 

Chaucer, 188 

Chepstow, 91-92 

Chester, 16-20 

Chesterfield, 336 

Cheviots. 250 

Chichester, 156 

Chipping Norton, 204 

Chislehurst, 178 

Chollerford, 248 

Clovelly, 119-123 

Clumber House, 332 

Clumber spaniel, 332 

Cold Door Pass, 53 

Coldstream Guards, 189, 254 

Coleridge, 109 

Colwyn Bay, 35, 36 ; town of, 37 

Combe Martin, 117 

Conlston Water, 317, 318 

Conway, 37 

Cornwall, 124 

Coventry, 217 

Coxhoe, 243 

Craigenputtock, 303 

Cralgmillar Castle, 268 

Cranford, 6, 11-14, 341 

Credlton, 129 

Crianlarich, 292 

Crosses, Town : at Lydney, 93 ; at 

Credlton, 129 
Crowland, 225 
Crystal Palace, 181 
Cumberland, 308 
Cupar, 274 



Daffodils, 313 

Dartford, 178 

Dartmoor, 129 

Dean, Forest of, 83-84 

Dee, Sands of, 24 

Deer : at Blandford, 143 ; Bushy 

Park, 187; Chatsworth, 337; 

Fotberingay, 221 ; Fountains 

Abbey, 240 ; Oxford, 200 ; Powis, 

57 
Derwent, the, 247 
Derwentwater, 314 
Devil's Elbow, 279. 280 
Devon, 114-124, 133 
Dickens, home of, 176 
Dochart, the, 291 
Dolgelly, 51, 52 
Dome, the greatest, 338 
Doncaster, 232 
Doon, Bonnie, 299 
Doone Vallev, 114 
Dorchester, 139-141 
Doyle, A. Conan, 123 
Drinking, Sunday, 157-158 
Druid stones, 147, 311 
Dryburgh Abbey, 258 
Dukeries, the, 332-337 
Dumbarton, 295 
Dumfries, 304 
Dundee, 277-278 
Dundonald, 35 
Dunfermline, 273 
Dunkeld, 283, 284 
Dunsinane, 283 
Durham, 242-246 



E 

Eamont Bridge, 312 

Earlston, 260 

Eastbourne, 160 

Eaton Hall, 20 

Ecclefechan, 305 

Eden Hall, Luck of, 310, 311 

Edinburgh, 265-268 

Edward the First, 42 

Eildons, 255, 258 

Eisteddfod, 38 

Elizabeth, Queen, 100, 215, 225 

Elms, 69 

Eton school, 191 

Exeter, 129-133 

Exmoor, 114 

Expenses, 340 

P 

Falkirk, 270 

Falkland, 274 

Farmers, 68 

Fens, 226, 228, 229, 230 

Ferries : Newnham, 93 ; Tay, 277 

Fife, 274 

Flags from Bunker Hill, 18 

Flodden, 252, 254, 259 

Floors Castle, 254 

Ford Castle, 253 

Forest : of Dean, 83, 84 ; Sherwood, 

332-333 
Forth Bridge, 269 
Fortingal, 289-290 
Foss-way, 230 
Fotheringay, 222-224 
Fountains Abbey, 240-242 
Four-shirestone, 206 
Franklin, Benjamin, 153, 154 
Funicular for motor car, 115 

G 

Gad's Hill, 176 

Garage charges, 309 

Gasoline, 285-286, 340 

Geoffrey of Monmouth, 87 

George, Lloyd, 50 

George the Fifth, 190 

Gladstone, 22 

Glasgow, 295, 296 

Glass in the roads, 296, 308 

Glastonbury, 105-107 

Glen Shee, 279, 280 

Gloucester, 79-82, 94 

God Begot House, 150 

Grade crossings, 21, 224, 226, 277 

Grasmere, 316 

Gravesend, 177 

Gray's Elegy, 191-193 

Great Orme's Head, 36 

Gretna Green, 306 

Gypsies, 254 



Haddington, 261 
Haddon Hall, 337, 338 
Ha-ha; a ditch, 22 
Halifax, 329 
Hampden, John, 196 
Hampton Court, 183-185 



INDEX 



345 



Hardwick Hall, 335, 336 

Hardy, Thomas, 139, 140 

Harlech, 46-49 

Harold, King, 16, 163 

Hastings, 161 

Hawarden, 22-24 

Haworth, 326, 329 

Hebden Bridge, 327 

Helvellyn, 315 

Hemans, Mrs., 33 

Henry the Fifth, Prince Hal, 84, 87, 

176 
Henry the Eighth, 107, 143, 183 
Heptonstall, 327 
Hexham, 248 

Hilly roads, 63, 93, 112, 327 
Holywell, 25-29 
Honiton, 133 
Hotspur, 59 



Ilfracombe, 118 

Ingelow, Jean, 228 

Inns : at Bridgnorth, 64 ; Carnarvon, 
39 ; Cemmaes, 55 ; Clovelly, 123 ; 
Cranford, 12 ; Glastonbury, 105 ; 
on Great North Road, 231; 
at Holywell, 26; Market Har- 
borough, 219, 220; Monmouth, 
84 ; Oundle, 222 ; near Haddon 
Hall, 338; the Royal Goat, 45; 
at Salisbury, 146 ; Ship, 97 ; at 
Thornhill, 302 ; Winchester, 150 

Inn names, 45, 150, 320, 321 

Inns, owned by trusts, 98 

Insurance for tour, 4 

Inversnald, 293 

Iron Bridge, 63 

Itchen, the, 152 



Jeffreys, Judge, 60, 132 
John, King, 72, 185, 228, 251 
Jones, Inigo, 302 
Jones, John Paul, 306 
Jordans, 195 



Katherine of Aragon, 224 
Katrine, Loch, 293 
Keighley, 325 
Kelso, 254 
Kenilworth, 215-216 
Kent, 170 
Keswick, 314 
Kidderminster, 67 
Killiecrankie, 286 
Killin, 291 
Kilmarnock, 297 
Kingston, 182 
Kipling, home of, 159 
Kirkcaldy, 273 
Kirk Yetholm, 254 
Knole House, 179 
Knutsford, 6, 11-14, 341 



Langshaw, tower of, 258 

Lauderdale, 260 

Launceston, 127 

Laundry, how arranged, 10 

Laurie, Annie, 302 

Leith, 267 

Lincoln, 229, 230 

Linlithgow, 269 

Liverpool, 341 

Lodore, 314 

Lomond, Loch, 292-295 

London, 180, 181 

Lord of the Manor, 121 

Luggage carrier, 10 

Luncheons out of doors, 15, 36, 110 

Lydney, 93 

Lynmouth, 114, 115 

Lynton, 116 

M 

Macclesfield, 339 

Manchester, 6-11 

Market Harborough, 219, 220 

Marston Moor, 237 

Mary Queen of Scots, 222-224, 261, 
266, 268, 269 

Maxwellton's braes, 302, 303, 304 

Melrose, 256-259, 283 

Menai Straits, 38 

Milton, 196 

Moniave, 303 

Monmouth, 84-89 

Moreton-in-the-Marsh, 206 

Motor-car : cost of renting and ship- 
ping, 2 ; buying and selling in 
England, 2-3 ; dear in England, 
309; 

Motoring : the tour, 1 ; daily aver- 
age, 1 ; expenses, 3, 340 ; going 
without haste, 216; resume" of 
tour, 340 

N 

Naseby, 219 
Nether Stowey, 109 
Nettles, 135 
New Cumnock, 300 
Newark Castle, 259 
Newnham, 93 
Newtown, 57 
Nith, the, 301, 304 
Nithdale, 301 
Norham Castle, 252 
Northumberland, 248-251 
Northumberland, Duke of, 250 

O 

Oak, black, brown, or gray, 245 
Oil, lubricating, 340; how carried, 

11 
Ormsley, 69 
Oundle, 222 
Oxford, 199-202 



Lag, tower of, 304 
Lammermoor, 260 



Parracombe, 116 
Patterdale, 313 
Peerage, the, 323 



346 



INDEX 



Penn, William, burial place, 195 ; 
father of, 100 

Penrith, 308, 310 

Percy, Harry, 59 

Percy, Lord, 251 

Percy's Reliques, 65 

Perth, 278-282 

Peterborough, 224 

Pevensey, 160, 161 

Philipse, Frederick, 18 

Pickwick at Bath, 102; at Tewkes- 
bury, 75 

Pilgrim Fathers, 226-227 

Plmperne, 143 

Pinchbeck, 226 

Pitlochry, 285 

Pocahontas, 177 

Pontius Pilate, 289, 290 

Porcelain works, 73 

Porlock, 112 

Portland, Duke of, 333 

Portsmouth, 156 

Powis Castle, 57-58 

Prince's Rlsborough, 197 

B 

Rain, 56, 95 

Rhuddlan, 35 

Richard Cceur de Lion, 172 

Riding Mill, 248 

Ripon, 238-240 

Road, Great North, 231, 232, 234 

Roads : character of, 39 ; flint, 168 ; 
funicular, 115 ; hand-broken 
stone, 66; hilly, 63, 112, 114, 
116, 327, 328; steam-rollers on, 
66 

Roads, reasons for excellence, 308, 
309 

Roads, rules of the, 30 

Robin Hood, 332 

Rob Roy cottage, 292 

Rochester, 175 

Roman camps : at Chollersford, 248 ; 
at Fortingal, 290 

Roman Wall, 247-249 

Rose, the Harrison, 283 

Roslyn, 268 

Rottingdean, 159 

Rougemont Castle, 132 

Rowsley, 337 

Roxburgh Castle, 254 

Rugby, 218 

Runnimede, 185-186 

Ruskin, home of, 318 

Rydal Water, 316, 317 

Rye, 168 



St. Andrew's, 276, 277 

St. Asaph's, 32-34 

St. Cross, 151 

St. Mary's Loch, 259 

Salisbury, 145-147 

Salop, 64 

Sampford Courtney, 128 

Sanquhar, 301 

Sarum, 144 

Schools, ancient : Blandford, 142 ; 

Bridgnorth, 65 ; Coventry, 217 ; 

Eton, 191 ; Manchester. 9-10 ; 



Rugby, 218; Shrewsbury, 60; 

Stratford, 211 
Scott, 203, 215, 252, 256, 260, 262, 

274, 278, 293 
Scrooby, 232 
Selkirk, 259 
Sevenoaks, 179 
Severn, the, 57, 58, 60, 62, 79, 93, 

95 
Severn tunnel, 85 
Shakespeare, 210-213, 283 
Sheffield, 330 
Sherwood Forest, 332 
Shire, meaning of word, 68 
Shoreham, 157, 158 
Shrewsbury, 58-61 
Shropshire, 58-64 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 60 
Sign, old wrought-iron, 219 
Skipton, 321-323 
Smailholm Tower, 257 
Snowdon, 44, 52 
Solway Firth, 306, 307 
South Downs, 135, 138, 141, 144, 

160 
Stanley, Henry M., 35 
Stirling, 270-272 
Stoke Poges, 191-193 
Stonehenge, 147, 148 
Stratford, 209-213 
Sulgrave Manor, 204 
Surfleet, 226 
Swineshead, 228 



Tantallon, 261-264 

Tay, Loch, 290 

Tay, the, 277, 281, 282, 285, 287 

Tea : near Chipping Norton, 205 ; 

at Edinburgh, 265 ; Fountains, 

242; Norham, 252; Tintern, 90 
Tewkesbury, 75-78 
Thame, 198 

Thames, boating on the, 188 
Thirlmere, 315 
Thornhill, 301-302 
Till, the, 252 
Tintagel, 124-126 
Tintern Abbey, 89-91 
Tire, doing without an extra, 11 
Tires, condition at end of tour, 339- 

340 
Toll-gates, 168 
Tour, outline of, 4 ; summing up of, 

339-340 
Towns, close-built, 63, 67 
Tramps, 103, 112, 124, 270, 287 
Trent, the, 231 
Trusts, 240 
Tummel, the, 285 
Tweed, the, 252, 255, 257 
Twilight, lingering, 254, 290 
Twizel Bridge, 252 
Twyford, 153 
Tyler, Wat, 172, 178 
Tyne, the, 248 

U 

Ullswater, 312, 313 
Underground rooms at Welbeck, 333, 
334 



INDEX 



347 



w 

Wakeman, at Ripon, 239 

Wales : first English Prince of, 41, 
42, 59 ; last Welsh prince of, 
42, 59 ; the backbone of, 52 

Walland Marshes, 169 

Waltham, Bishop's, 155 

Walton, Izaak, 72, 95, 152 

Warwick, 213, 214 

Water for motor, 52, 53 

Watling Street, 178 

Welbeck Abbey, 333-334 

Wells, 104, 105 

Welshpool, 57 

Westminster, Duke of, 20 

Westward Ho! 119 

Wickham, 155 

Willersley, 207 

William and Mary, 183 

William the Conqueror, 130, 149, 
150, 160-163 



William of Wykeham, 149 

Wimbledon, 182 

Winchelsea, 164-167 

Winchester, 149, 150 

Windermere, 317, 319 

Windsor, 187-190 

Wolsey, Cardinal, 183, 200, 232 

Woodstock, 203 

Worcester, 70-74 

Worcestershire, 68-74 

Wordsworth, 90, 259, 260, 313, 316, 

317 
Worksop, 330 
Wye, Valley of the, 89-91 



Yarrow, the, 259 
Yews, trimmed, 63 
York, 234-237 
Yorkshire Moors, 327-329 
Yorkshire, West Riding of, 327 



H 396 



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